


knocked me sideways

by ferryboatpeak



Series: mpreg jackrry [1]
Category: Dunkirk (2017) RPF, Harry Styles (Musician), One Direction (Band)
Genre: A baby - Freeform, Barebacking, Boys Kissing, Camping, Christmas, Drinking, Drunk Sex, Fruit, Golf, M/M, Mpreg, Mpreg Harry, Past Narry, Ping Pong, Pining, Rimming, Total Navajo, Yoga, beer boots, everybody's american, funkirk, gentrification, gucci tiger pillow, in fact the biology is very hand-wavey sorry, not a/b/o, sibling relationships, sorry but people gotta get pregnant somehow, tech bros, undernegotiated barebacking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-03-28 14:16:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 59,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13905786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferryboatpeak/pseuds/ferryboatpeak
Summary: "You remember Harry, from the bar?”Tom’s eyebrows go up. “The kickball one.” he says. “Go on...”“He,” Jack scrubs at his beard with his knuckles. “He’s pregnant.”A gentrification au featuring the funkirk tech bros, the 1D kickball team, and incidental c.h.a.s.m.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yeahloads](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeahloads/gifts).



> this is for and because of [@harryshippudge](http://harryshippudge.tumblr.com/), the best question-poser and idea generator in this fandom
> 
> ...except for the parts about barry, which are mostly for [team dreamwidth](https://myfavouriteconversations.dreamwidth.org/) and especially [@countthestars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/countthestars) and [@saysthemagpie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saysthemagpie), whose insight and enthusiasm were integral to this work's completion
> 
> immense gratitude to [@1degosuperego](http://1degosuperego.tumblr.com/) for the keen-eyed beta, for getting this story unstuck in several key places, and for adding my favorite easter egg
> 
> title is from the script's _glowing_

The basket of fried pickles was Barry’s idea. Like a lot of Barry’s ideas, it was a bad one. The pickles wait forlornly at Jack’s end of the table, strange and greasy and rejected, as Barry returns from the bar with a giant glass boot held aloft in both hands. The boot, apparently, is another of Barry’s ideas.

“It’s a German thing,” he announces. Beer sloshes over the rim of the boot and hits the floor with an audible splat. He takes a healthy swig and offers the boot to Fionn. “You pass it around, and nobody’s allowed to set it down until it’s empty.”

The bar’s German theme is the only thing that distinguishes it from the other bars in the neighborhood where they work. It’s got a menu full of sausages, Bayern Munich jerseys on the wall, and a server or two in a dirndl. Otherwise, the high ceilings and walls of windows and exposed brick look just like the street-level commercial spaces of every other brand new six-story apartment building on the block.

“I thought you were Irish.” Fionn waves the boot away.

“That means I’m always open to new ways of drinking.” Barry passes the boot to Jack instead, starting its rotation in the opposite direction of Fionn.

Jack drinks. It’s awkward, but it’s beer. He hands the boot off to Tom.

“Gross,” Tom says, but he takes a drink anyway. Aneurin plays along too, and Jack waits to see if Fionn’s going to cooperate with or without Barry employing some combination of encouragement, cajoling, and berating. Ever since they all met as interns in their tech company’s summer program, Barry’s made it his mission to get his fellow programmer Fionn out of the office and get him drunk and laid. Fionn’s stance on those three goals is somewhere between indifference and active opposition, but Barry’s persevered for six years anyway.

Barry’s tipping the boot to Fionn’s mouth like he’s a baby condor when a hand suddenly slams into the basket of fried pickles, rattling the rounds of empty pint glasses on the table. The basket skids across the table and upends itself into Jack’s lap as Tom intercepts a falling glass just in time. Jack sees a flash of red bandana as the owner of the hand, who apparently tried to catch himself on their table, disappears below the tabletop. He yelps as he hits the ground hard. 

“You OK?” Jack peers over the edge of the tall pub table. The first thing he sees is a lot of leg, starting with nice thighs emerging from a too-short pair of athletic shorts and ending in white socks pulled up high.

“Yeah.” The guy gingerly pulls himself together, wincing. “I think there’s a wet spot?” His voice is slow and puzzled, as if a puddle of beer on the floor of the bar is a confusing situation.

“Sorry, man.” Barry offers a hand up. “Blame the boot.”

As the beer boot’s victim gets to his feet, Jack can see that he’s got a black t-shirt with the logo of a local kickball league, an armful of tattoos, and bone structure so good that the wistful spots of stubble on his chin and upper lip don’t even detract from it. His face doesn’t quite make sense, eyes too far apart and mouth too wide and hair sticking out at unorganized angles behind the bandana that’s keeping it at bay, but Jack can’t stop staring at the overall effect.

He makes himself look away long enough to pick up the pickle basket, and the guy notices. “Sorry!” He grabs the basket from Jack’s hands and starts to refill it with the pickles, sweeping them out of Jack’s lap and and back into the checkered paper liner.

“Easy there,” Jack says, when he gets to the pickles closest to Jack’s zipper. 

“Sorry, sorry.” He hands the basket to Jack, moving back a step. Giving Jack a contrite look, he raises a hand to his head and then drops it, as if he went to push his hair back and forgot there’s already a bandana holding it in place. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Jack says, grinning at him. There’s pickle grease on his jeans, but It’s hard to be mad at the best-looking person who’s ever had his hands in Jack’s lap. “They were terrible anyway.”

“Good to know.” One side of his mouth pulls back in a crooked smile. “All right, then.” He turns to leave.

Jack tries to think of something, anything, to say, and then Barry saves him. “Here, drink,” he demands, poking the guy in the arm with the toe of the boot.

“What?” He turns back to the table. 

“Go on, your turn.” Barry thrusts the boot at him.

He takes the boot from Barry and drinks, looking amusedly at Jack out of the corner of his eye and only spilling a little bit over the side of his mouth.

“See, the boot is key,” Barry says. “Pints would have spilled when you hit the table, but the boot stays high and dry, know what I mean?”

Apparently the bandana guy doesn’t, because he makes a move to sit the boot on the tabletop. Everyone shouts in disapproval and Barry and Jack each throw up a hand, blocking the boot in mid-air. The guy raises his eyebrows questioningly.

“You can’t sit it down,” Barry says. “Not until it’s empty.”

He looks disgruntled. “I’m not finishing a boot,” he says, trying to hand it back to Barry.

“No, you pass it.” Barry gestures around the table. “But first you drink again because you’re a clumsy idiot.”

“Hey…” Jack starts, but bandana guy’s not bothered. That crooked smile again. “Sounds fair.” Jack realizes that the rest of them had passed around the boot with two hands, but this guy’s able to manage it with one massive hand wrapped around the heel.

He drinks again, and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Your turn...” he says, plucking Jack’s ID badge off his chest and peering at it, “...Jack.” He tugs on the lanyard the tiniest bit, just enough for Jack to feel a bit of tension.

“Who are you, then?” Jack reaches out to take the boot from him.

He doesn’t let go of Jack’s lanyard. “Harry.” Harry takes a step closer, toward the boot they’re holding between them, looking intently at Jack in a way that’d be uncomfortable if Jack wasn’t already tempted to slide out of his chair and up against him. Harry increases the tension on Jack’s badge, until Jack almost has to lean toward him, and then he lets go, smirking. He gestures around the table, at the identical lanyards dangling from all of their necks. “Why do you all have them?”

“Work.” Jack shrugs, and drinks. 

“It’s Friday night,” Harry says, leaning an elbow on the back of Jack’s chair. “None of you are working.”

“We came straight here after, though.” Jack hands the boot over to Tom and turns back to Harry. “Just easier. As soon as you take it off, it gets lost. And everyone has them, anyway.” He gestures vaguely around the bar, where almost everyone has an ID badge with the same corporate logo as Jack’s. Suddenly it seems a little weird, but it’d be the same every place else in the neighborhood. “You must not hang out around here much.”

“Not so much, no,” Harry says, emphatically, like it ought to go without saying. “Are you, like, programmers?”

“Just Barry and Fionn.” Jack gestures across the table at the two of them.

Tom breaks in. “Fionn’s a programmer. Barry’s a brogrammer.”

“Tom’s management,” Barry fires back, putting a posh accent on “management.”

“Shut up,” Tom says, rolling his eyes. “I have two direct reports.”

“I genuinely have no idea what any of that means.” Harry takes the boot from Barry, drinks, and smoothly hands it off to Jack, all with an elbow still on the back of Jack’s chair.

“Tom’s in marketing,” Jack explains, after taking his turn and passing the boot along.

“You’re just saying business words now.” Harry’s still leaning on the back of Jack’s chair, which means that his face is a little too close when Jack turns to talk to him. “What’s marketing?”

“It’s something hot blonde people do,” Barry says.

Tom doesn’t even bother to look offended. “I have a very particular set of skills.”

“I give up.” Harry says. The boot’s back around to him. He takes a gulp and wipes his mouth with the back of his other hand. 

“Don’t feel bad,” Jack says, taking the boot from him. “None of us know what the fuck Aneurin does.”

Harry looks at Aneurin inquiringly. 

“I work in the innovation unit.” Aneurin manages to say it with a straight face.

Harry’s laugh is a clattering cackle that matches the unselfconscious awkwardness of the rest of him. “You’re making this shit up.”

“Nope, there’s actually an innovation unit,” Barry says. “They’re working on jetpacks or some shit.”

“Asteroid mining,” Tom adds.

“The robot uprising,” says Jack. “Aneurin’s the only one of us who’ll survive.”

The bar’s filling up around them, happy hour having long since given way to the evening crowd. Barry triumphantly drains the toe of the boot and flags down a server to order another one. She tries to remove the empty boot and Barry insists on keeping it at the center of the table, a trophy. “See how quick we can make it a pair,” he demands, drumming his hands on the tabletop.

Jack’s prepared for Harry to take off once he sees the first boot through. But he’s still leaning on the back of Jack’s chair, casually inserting himself into the conversation, gradually easing himself up against Jack’s side. Jack can smell sweat and coconut and vanilla. His arm’s trapped; the only place he can move it is around Harry, so he does. Harry shifts his weight, leaning his hip into Jack’s chair, fitting himself against Jack. It feels like Harry’s filed off his unfinished edges and slid into the smooth outline that remains, like a slot made for his shape.

He settles his hand on a surprisingly soft bit of Harry’s hip just above the puckered waistband of his athletic shorts. It feels like he’s found the right handhold on a rock wall, the logical next place where his hand’s supposed to be. He can’t remember the entire right side of his body ever feeling better than it does with Harry pressed up against it, Harry’s arm around his back, Harry’s fingers tracing abstract patterns just above his knee.

***

Soon Jack’s tapping a finger against each of the empty boots on the table, trying to confirm that none of them are multiplying in his vision. There’s a pint in front of him that he doesn’t remember ordering. He congratulates himself on his foresight. There’s yet another boot going around, in the opposite direction this time. Tom holds it out toward him, and Jack clinks his pint glass against it in a toast. The pint is better that the boot. He can hold a pint in one hand and keep the other on Harry. He’s a drinking genius.

“You OK?” Tom leans past him to hand the boot to Harry.

“I’m great.” Jack tips his glass toward Tom. He makes a half-hearted attempt at the math. Two pints during happy hour, two boots, or is it three boots? And how big’s the boot? Two liters, three? Barry’d spilled some, though, hadn’t he? Jack gives up on the numbers, drains half of his pint, and turns to look at Harry after he hands the boot across the table to Barry.

Harry’s face is close to his, beer and peppermint on his breath. Jack pokes a finger at the logo on the left side of his shirt, and leaves it there longer than it needs to be. “You have a game tonight?”

“Yeah.” Harry points his thumb over his shoulder toward a table of people in the same shirt, on the other side of the bar. “My friend Niall’s team. Down a couple of guys tonight, so he got me to play.”

“You guys win?”

Harry half-laughs. “Surprisingly, yes.”

“Why surprising?”

“Turns out I’m pretty bad at kickball.” He looks simultaneously confused and disappointed. “I feel like I should be a lot better.”

“Shocking that you’re not, with your coordination.” Jack looks in the direction of the floor that brought Harry sprawling into his evening.

“Heyyyyy.” Harry tugs on his lanyard again. “That was a hazardous circumstance.” He keeps fiddling with the lanyard, lacing it through his fingers, hand resting on Jack’s chest. “A trap.”

“Beer boot treachery,” Jack agrees. “You’re onto us.” His heart’s beating faster, like it’s trying to strain its way upward against Harry’s hand. God, he’s had a lot to drink.

***

His pint’s gone and somehow he’s finishing the next boot. Barry reaches across the table for a fistbump while the rest of the table cheers. Everything seems warm and bright, picking up speed, careening toward some kind of precipice. Jack wants to go over, to fling himself into whatever’s possible tonight. Blood’s pulsing in his wrists, in his temples, in his neck right under the spot where Harry’s lips catch before he murmurs into Jack’s ear, “You live around here?”

It’s a lucky guess. Or maybe it doesn’t take that much luck to guess that Jack, with his corporate lanyard looped around the neck of his casual Friday blue buttondown, lives a few blocks away in a mixed-use building that looks very much like the one they’re sitting in. Instead of a German bar and an artisan chocolate shop on the ground floor, his has a kaiten sushi restaurant and a barre method studio and a bakery that sells organic cupcakes for dogs. “I do,” he says, tipping his head toward Harry, nose bumping his bandana, lips brushing his forehead. “You should visit sometime.”

Harry lifts his head, his nose sliding through Jack’s beard and up against his cheek. He pulls back just before their mouths meet, leaving Jack open-lipped. “Ready when you are,” he smirks, and Jack adds to his brand new but already extensive list of ways he wants to wipe the smirk off of that tragically good-looking face.

Jack considers sliding straight off of his chair and out the door with Harry without further delay. His friends would either forgive him (Tom, Aneurin), encourage him (Barry) or not care either way (Fionn). But Jack wants it noted that Harry’s leaving with him, wants the record to reflect this clumsy gorgeous kickball player tripping on their spilled beer and landing in Jack’s bed. He wishes there was a way to tell the entire bar, the entire city. Tom’s a good start, though.

“Hey.” Jack leans over, cheek connecting with Tom’s shoulder. Aneurin’s watching Barry try to convince Fionn of something. “I’m gonna....” He tries to gesture toward the the door and realizes his arm’s pinned underneath Harry, who’s leaning heavily against him.

“Bye, Tom.” Harry reaches past Jack and pets Tom’s chest. “Nice to meet you.”

Tom shrugs Jack’s face off of his shoulder. “Go on, go.” He shoves Jack away with a smile,and flicks his fingers dismissively at the both of them.

Jack slides off his chair, one hand on Harry’s hip, moving toward the door. Harry’s eyes dart over his shoulder, toward the table of his friends. Jack stops. “Do you need to…?”

“No,” Harry says, decisively, grabbing Jack’s hand. “Let’s go.” The racket of Friday night echoes off the polished concrete as they make their way to the exit, and then recedes as the door closes behind them. 

***

The smell of the late spring night, morning rain dissolved into a damp promise of summer humidity, does nothing to clear Jack’s head. It only heightens the sense of chaotic possibility that’s been building ever since the pull on his lanyard started tugging him toward Harry. Jack slings his arm around Harry and steers them in the right direction, wanting every stray smoker outside the bar to take note.

A slice of the cityscape appears between buildings as they cross an intersection, skyscrapers pulsing with light. The view slides double and Jack focuses hard, willing the buildings back into alignment. They resolve themselves obediently. He’s got this under control; the city bends to his command. He’s going to chest-bump every skyscraper. He’s invincible.

Harry catches a toe on the sidewalk and stumbles hard against Jack, knocking him off balance. Jack goes with it, dragging Harry with him into the shadow of the building they’re passing and hitting the wall hard. The brick feels reassuringly solid when he shoulders into it, and the shaky details of the street scene steady themselves for a moment. Then Harry twists himself around so they’re facing each other, both with a shoulder against the wall, and everything spins again. The rough brick under his shirtsleeve is just enough to convince Jack this is real, when all he can see is Harry’s silhouette in the streetlight and all he can feel is Harry crowded up against him. Harry’s just enough shorter that he’s got to tip Jack’s face down to kiss him, which he does with a hand along his jaw and a thumb against Jack’s cheek. Jack thrills at the alien feeling of a new face against his, a new nose bumping into his own, a new taste in his mouth.

Harry’s kiss is somehow both lazy and demanding, and Jack wants to figure it out with his lips and his teeth and his tongue all at once. He turns to press Harry back against the brick, his hands at Harry’s hips and his shoulders forward to feel Harry warm and solid against him from his chest to his thighs. Harry’s breath catches. He shifts to slot a knee between Jack’s and slides his hands slowly down from Jack’s shoulders. Jack feels each fingertip down his back as the kiss deepens, Harry’s wide mouth fitted against his. Harry’s thumbs hook under Jack’s belt for a moment, and then he squirms out from under Jack, whispering roughly, “Let’s go.”

Jack gets them to his apartment building by blind habit. There’s a sameness to the blocks of his neighborhood on a good day, and tonight he’s having a hard time focusing on the landmarks: the double helix sculpture, the dog day care, the bikeshare stand. They flicker in and out of the edges of his vision. Sometimes they look like they might be in the wrong place when he turns around to remind himself of them. The only thing he’s sure of is the feel of Harry next to him. The evening’s starting to snap in and out of focus like frames from a Viewmaster, searing bright scenes between strips of white blankness.

The entrance to his building blurs, the lights over the entryway too bright. Jack fumbles for his keycard in front of the door. Harry leans over him too close, shoulder colliding heavily with the door frame. He noses up against Jack’s neck and Jack shivers. His wallet slips through his fingers and hits the sidewalk. Harry laughs at that, his unguarded, undignified cackle echoing too loudly in the empty lobby when Jack wrenches the door open.

The elevator’s only an impression, a sense of a liminal space lingered in too long. Jack’s hands ought to be under Harry’s t-shirt, tracing the dip of his spine and the curve of his ribcage, so they are. He doesn’t realize the doors have slid open and shut more than once until Harry’s reminding him to hit the button, and then they laugh about that long enough for the doors to open and close again.

Harry walks a few paces ahead of Jack into the apartment while Jack pauses to fumble for the light switch. When the light fills the room, it’s as if it refracts strangely around Harry, creating the illusion of a different apartment entirely. Jack barely recognizes the room with Harry in it.

“Nice place,” Harry says, looking around the main room at the pendant lights over the island between the kitchen and the sitting area, the dark wood cabinets, the sectional couch that’s far and away the most expensive thing Jack has ever nervously purchased in one fell swoop. “You have roommates?”

“Just me,” Jack says. Harry’s red bandana is the brightest thing in the room, beckoning Jack toward it. A corner of the fabric pokes out just over Harry’s temple. Jack pinches it experimentally and tugs it downward, and it’s like he’s pulled a ripcord, like everything opens up from there. 

It’s dark, and Jack can’t remember turning the lights off. They’re in his bedroom, and he can’t remember getting there. Harry’s torso is blotched with a fearsome and ridiculous set of symmetrical tattoos, and Jack can’t remember the moment when he first saw them. 

Jack stops trying to hold onto words, onto events. All he’s carrying from one moment to the next are sensations. Harry’s skin smooth against his. The aspirational bristles on Harry’s chin scratching the tip of his nose. The curve of his neck, pliant under Jack’s teeth. The compulsion to figure Harry out, inch by inch, with every sense available to him. The dim line of his thighs as Jack presses them open, and the feel of Harry in his mouth, heavy and warm.

Everything snaps back into focus seconds later when Harry comes, hot and unexpected, tickling the back of his throat. “Sorry,” Harry chokes out, trying not to laugh, mouth contorting and stomach muscles tensing with the effort.

Jack doesn’t bother to try. “You’re terrible at this,” he says, knees on either side of Harry, crawling back toward his mouth, laughing so hard the words barely come out.

Harry shakes with laughter beneath him. “Terrible?” His cross pendant’s slid up his chest to nestle in the hollow of his throat.

Jack tries to kiss him, but they’re both laughing, lips distorted and teeth clacking together and spit everywhere. “Absolutely terrible.” He drops his head to Harry’s shoulder, opens his mouth experimentally. There’s salt on the tip of his tongue, skin tender where his teeth graze against it. He can’t decide whether he’s kissing Harry or trying to eat him. Maybe both.

Harry’s squirming underneath him, working a hand between their bodies and around Jack’s cock. Jack can’t remember what he was trying to do with his mouth; suddenly all it’s good for is exhaling hotly against Harry’s skin. Harry bites at Jack’s ear. “I want you to fuck me,” he whispers, any effort at a seductive tone ruined by his stifled laughter.

“That sounds terrible,” Jack says, and he almost laughs but he can’t quite manage it, not with Harry’s hand settling into an insistent rhythm that’s making Jack’s toes curl against the mattress. “I can’t wait.”

***

The clock says 3:39 when Jack wakes up. The top of his skull says a hangover is coming, but it’s no match for the rest of him, which feels as good as he’s ever felt. He’s sticky and wrung-out and sore all down his stomach, and he realizes that’s from laughing, he’s sore from how much they laughed. He can’t remember what they laughed about, exactly, but he feels good in a bone-deep kind of way that’s different from the aftermath any orgasm he’s ever had before.

The darkness in his room feels different with Harry on the other side of his bed. There’s more weight to it, more warmth. More texture to his apartment’s small middle-of-the-night noises. He rolls onto his side. Harry’s sleeping on his stomach next to him, with the pillow twisted sideways and wrapped in his arms. Jack can barely make out his face.

Harry could be anyone. This isn’t Jack’s first one night stand, but all of the others have had some kind of connection to his life. A guest at the same wedding, a girl from the sorority across the street from his fraternity house, a guy from his MBA program. Some kind of indicator of reliability, however small. It occurs to him, faintly, that this was a bad decision.

Jack doesn’t usually make those. His life has been premised on good decisions -- the right college, graduating with honors, the prestigious internship, the job offer that followed, the MBA he worked through part-time to avoid too much debt. Responsible choices. Rewarding, if predictable. He inches closer to Harry, until his nose touches the intersection of their pillows. Harry sighs in his sleep. His hair sticks out in every direction, dark against the white pillowcase in the dim of Jack’s room. Jack drifts back to sleep to the gentle rhythm of Harry’s breathing. None of his good decisions ever felt like this.

***

Jack wakes up again hours later. Harry’s standing in the middle of the room, outlined in the light filtering through the blinds behind him. His arms are stretched up to tie his bandana back in place around his forehead. It makes his kickball t-shirt ride up, giving Jack a glimpse of the leafy tattoos above the waistband of his soccer shorts from the night before. Jack stretches out a hand to touch, but Harry’s just a bit too far away. He lets his arm drop. He should sit up. Or maybe he’ll just slither the bottom half of his body out of bed so that he has to move his head as little as possible.

“Don’t get up.” Harry walks closer. “I’ve gotta take off.”

“...okay?” Jack pushes the side of his face into the pillow, trying to counter the tightness at the top of his skull. He ought to tell Harry to stay, ought to… breakfast… but his stomach does a slow distasteful roll at the thought of food.

Harry smiles down at him and threads his fingers through Jack’s hair. Jack’s head feels momentarily better down the path of each cool fingertip, and then the hangover thuds dully back into place. He tries not to whine, with limited success.

Bending down, Harry kisses the half of Jack’s mouth that’s not buried in the pillow. Jack tries to kiss back as competently as he can with his lips pressed together. Nobody else should have to endure the way his mouth tastes at the moment. His stomach turns over again. It’s nice of Harry to leave him to die in peace. At least he’s going to die happy.

He closes his eyes on the image of Harry walking out of his bedroom and waits until he hears the apartment door pulled definitively closed behind him. Then he leverages himself out of bed, lifting his head upright inch by painful inch, and shuffles toward the bathroom, only stopping once to curl up on the floor and feel sorry for himself.

The glasses are in the kitchen cabinet, an impossible twenty feet away. The bathroom sink’s right there, but skipping a glass means sacrificing the current hard-won upright status of his head. Proximity wins out, proximity and the very tentative state of his stomach, which is not demanding to expel its contents immediately but is reserving the right to do so in the very near future. Jack turns on the tap and bends over to slurp messily from the faucet.

He rests his forearms on the edge of the counter afterwards, avoiding the mirror. He looked good enough last night to take Harry home; he’s going to let that sit for a while without ruining it with the sight of his bleary hangover face.

As he flushes, the garbage can next to the toilet catches his eye. It’s empty except for a length of dental floss trailing over the blue plastic edge. Jack’s head throbs. He bends down gingerly and scoots the garbage can out from its niche between the sink and the toilet. There’s a used tissue behind it, but nothing else that’s missed the can. For a moment, he holds onto the gross but preferable possibility that he left the condom on the floor of his bedroom.

He just walked across that floor, though. There’s no condom there. There’s no condom on the floor and there’s no condom in the garbage can; there’s no condom, period. His mouth feels wet and full and he bends to spit into the toilet a moment before everything comes up, alcohol and bile burning his throat and eyes watering.

He rinses his mouth and splashes water on his face and chokes down an ibuprofen before he drags himself back to bed and pulls the duvet up past his ears. His sheets smell faintly like Harry and overwhelmingly like sex. Heat slides through him at the memory, and yet that’s all he can remember. No other specifics, just the general impression that it was the best sex he’s ever had. He doesn’t remember rolling on a condom, but then again he doesn’t remember deciding not to wrap it up either.  _ No wonder it was the best sex ever _ , he thinks bitterly. He shoves the covers back down under his chin and wills himself back to sleep, hoping he’ll wake up to an explanation, to a used condom in some unlikely place he hasn’t thought of, to some memory that his pounding head hasn’t let swim to the surface just yet.

It doesn’t happen. The only thing Jack wakes up to is a string of alerts from the group chat Barry started the year they all met in the summer intern program. When he trudges into the kitchen for a glass of water, they’re waiting on his phone next to his keys in their usual spot on the counter. Apparently at least some of his habits survive a blackout. There’s no note next to them, no scrap of paper with a phone number. Not that he’d expected one, exactly. He’d just thought that maybe, if Harry was going to leave anything, the logical place would be by his phone.

_ so how was your night, Jack? _

_ you left your jacket _

_ tom has it _

_ jack? _

_ you ok  _

_ Jaaaaaaaaaack _

_ are you dead jack _

_ did he actually murder you _

_ did he kill you with sex _

Jack stretches out on the couch. He props the bottom edge of his phone on his chest and slowly types  _ hungover as balls _ . Closing his eyes, he lets the phone wilt until it lands face-down under his chin. He sifts through his memories of the night before, trying to line them up and fill in the gaps, but he can’t resolve the sharp and glittering fragments into a coherent picture. As his nausea settles, a different kind of ache emerges, closer to the surface and not unpleasant. Sore muscles, the way they get from laughing too long and too hard.

The more he thinks about it, the more he starts to fill in every blank with the worst-case scenario. Harry walked out this morning with no note, no phone number. If Jack hadn’t woken up, Harry might not even have said goodbye. Maybe what Jack remembers as the best sex ever was lousy. Maybe what Jack remembers as a fun evening was actually a drunken embarrassment. Whatever happened last night, it didn’t give Harry any further interest in Jack. That stings.

His phone stays silent for a little while, leaving him alone with his lingering queasiness and his increasingly dire thoughts. When it finally buzzes, it’s a text from Tom, mercifully outside the group chat.  _ breakfast? _

Jack stretches and takes inventory. He’s done puking. His headache’s settled into a dull reminder rather than an excruciating focus. He could probably make it through a shower. Food’s not entirely unthinkable. And he can’t just hole up in his apartment all day, alternately remembering the best parts of last night and worrying about what the consequences will be.  _ 1130? _

_ ok meet you there _

The location goes without saying. Forty-five minutes later, when Jack shows up at the dim Greek restaurant that’s been their hangover breakfast spot for years, Tom’s sitting on one side of a two-top in the back corner. Jack’s rain jacket hangs over the back of the opposite chair. ,Putting on the jacket to walk through the drizzle to work yesterday morning seems like something he did a long time ago. Or something he did in a different life, his usual life where he goes to work on time and dresses for the weather. Not a life where he has reckless, dizzying, barely-remembered sex with a stranger.

“You’re alive,” Tom greets him.

“Barely.” Jack sinks into his chair and turns the waiting coffee mug right side up. He scans the laminated menu in front him, looking for the option least likely to offend his still-questionable stomach.

The server delivers a bloody mary for Tom and fills Jack’s coffee mug. As she walks away, Tom’s expression is expectant. “So…?”

“So?” Jack lets a little smugness into his voice.

“Does that mean it was a good night?”

“It was good.” Jack leans back in his chair, smiling. The hood of his rain jacket rustles behind him. “It was a good night.” Which is a completely inadequate answer, but the warm satisfaction he felt when he woke up in the middle of the night can’t be put into words. He resolves to remember that feeling, to focus on that, rather than on what he’s missing or what he can’t change now.

“And?”

Giving Tom all the details ought to be automatic. But Jack remembers more feelings than he does details. And even the part that’s most solid in his mind, the part that’s exactly the kind of ridiculous hookup story they’d usually tell each other for laughs, feels more than an inside joke with Harry than something to share with Tom. Jack can’t quite bring himself to say, “It was like being back in high school, I blew him and he came in like three seconds.”

He shrugs instead. “I don’t remember a lot of it.” Jack takes a small experimental sip of coffee. His stomach doesn’t revolt. “I was pretty wasted.”

“Yeah, you were,” Tom confirms. 

The server comes back to take their orders, an omelet for Tom and eggs and toast for Jack. “Anything to drink for you besides coffee?” she asks Jack. 

“Go on.” Tom rattles the ice cubes in his drink. “Hair of the dog.”

Nothing about alcohol seems like a good idea right now. Jack asks for a Diet Coke instead, and Tom looks surprised. “That bad?”

“The worst.” It feels like he’s coming down from more than the alcohol. Like his body’s aching from the swing between the emotions of last night -- the invincibility, the pleasure, the sense of possibility -- and the realities of this morning, Harry gone without a trace and Jack reckoning with the consequences.

When the server leaves, Tom picks up where they left off. “He was pretty drunk too, wasn’t he?”

“Thought so.” Or at least he hopes so. “Seemed like he was in better shape than me this morning.”

“Oh, he stayed?” Tom asks, with great interest, definitely with the wrong idea. 

“Sort of.” Jack presses his lips together. Maybe Harry slept at his place, but he didn’t  _ stay _ . “Left pretty early.”

Tom’s undeterred. “So is this, like, a thing?”

“Nope.” That, at least, is clear. Harry left without a word, without a phone number. Jack suddenly realizes that Harry talked to them all evening, but he doesn’t really know anything about him. Maybe he doesn’t remember, or maybe Harry didn’t say. “Don’t even know his last name.”

“No strings attached.” Tom takes the skewer out of his bloody mary and slides a pickled green bean off with his teeth. He watches Jack while he chews. “You’re doing that thing again.”

“What thing?” Jack says, even as his hand stills on the zipper pull of his track jacket. He wonders how long he’s been unconsciously zipping it up and down.

“That thing with your zipper.” Jack reaches for the bundle of napkin and silverware at the top of his paper placemat instead, working his finger under the paper ring that holds it together. “Everything OK?”

The ring comes off in one piece and Jack works the strip of paper into a tight roll between his thumb and forefinger. “Yeah.” There’s no reason to tell Tom about the condom thing. It will either be fine or it won’t be, and either way he doesn’t need questions or lectures now. “Just hungover.” 

Their food arrives, ending the subject and giving Jack something more productive to do with his hands. He pierces a fried egg with his fork and watches the yolk bleed across the plate.

“We were talking Fourth of July after you left,” Tom says, neatly slicing into his omelet. “You want to camp again this year?”

“Sure.” Jack dams up the yolk with a piece of toast and takes a bite. It tastes better than he expected. His stomach’s ready for something to soak up the rest of last night, get it out of his system. “Where at?”

“That place at the lake. Barry says he can take Friday off and get a spot.”

“Sounds good.” Jack cuts out a triangle of egg with the side of his fork. “I should be able leave early, if you want to drive together.”

It feels good to remember that summer’s coming. There will be late evening light and grilling and baseball on the radio. They’ll go camping and he’ll remember the pickle relish because nobody else ever does. It’s almost end of quarter; he’ll go into the office tomorrow and try to finish up the contracts in his inbox before it fills up again on Monday. He’ll get tested and he’ll be careful and he’s not even going to let himself think about the possibility of other more permanent consequences. Pretty soon last night will be just a strange glowing memory, a radio tower blinking in the rear view mirror. Harry’s gone, and he’s not coming back.


	2. Chapter 2

Any day that starts with waking in the clean grey light inside a tent is going to be a good day, and this one has already delivered. Jack’s already had an early morning swim and an egg sandwich from the camp stove. With the first beer of the day in one hand, he shakes open his camp chair with the other and digs the legs into the gritty sand at the edge of the lake. He stretches his feet into the water, situates his can of Budweiser in the pocket on the arm of the chair, and closes his eyes to bask in the morning sunshine.

He opens them when something heavy lands in his lap. It’s a roll of duct tape. Jack looks up at Barry, who’s situating himself on a log next to Jack’s chair. “What’s this for?”

“Sparkler bomb.” Barry pulls a box of sparklers out of a plastic bag that Jack can see contains many, many more boxes of sparklers. He remembers the roadside fireworks stand they passed at the turnoff to the lake yesterday. He and Tom hadn’t stopped. Clearly, Barry and Fionn had. The two of them had left the city first thing in the morning to secure Barry’s preferred campsite, the one at the far side of the lake with no other sites in earshot.

Barry empties the first box into his hand and bunches the sparklers together. “Hand me the tape.”

Jack does. This is probably a terrible idea, but he’s interested to see where it goes. Barry pulls out a length of tape and winds it around the sparklers. He rests them in his lap, still attached to the roll of duct tape, and opens a second box of sparklers. By the time Barry’s got three boxes taped together, Jack realizes this is going to go on for a while, and closes his eyes again.

He doesn’t bother to open them when he hears Tom splash out of the water and spread his towel out next to him. “Great day,” Tom says.

“Yeah.” The lake laps gently at Jack’s ankles. A heron squawks somewhere on the far side of the water. The duct tape unspools with a sticky ripping sound that almost falls into a rhythm as Barry adds box after box of sparklers to his project.

Jack’s lazily considering whether to get another beer or give in to a midmorning nap in the sun when a car crunches up the gravel road behind them. The engine cuts off, and a moment later furious barking announces Gibson’s arrival. The German Shepherd tears down the beach and splashes into the shallows, waiting until Aneurin throws a toy out into the lake for him to retrieve.

“How was the drive?” Jack doesn’t bother to lift up his head from the back of his chair, just rolls it to the side to look at Aneurin.

“Just fine.” Gibson plunges toward the toy with great galumphing splashes until he hits depth and starts to paddle. “Was yesterday a bitch?”

“Fine for us,” Barry says. “These guys got the traffic, though.”

“We left too late.” Tom closes his book, keeping a finger in his place. “Took us five hours.”

Aneurin makes a sympathetic noise. Gibson turns back toward the beach, toy in his mouth. “Where’s Fionn?”

“Think he’s walking around the lake.” Barry abandons his sparkler bomb on the log and wades into the lake to catch Gibson’s attention. “Looking good, wolfdog.” When Gibson reaches shallow water, Barry catches the rope end of the toy dangling out of his mouth. He tugs it back and forth as the dog growls and splashes.

“Hey, Barry, keep him occupied while we unload?” Aneurin turns back toward his car when Barry gives him a thumbs-up, his other hand still engaged in tug-of-war with Gibson.

Jack follows Aneurin up to the campsite and retrieves a beer from the cooler. Barry’s Kiss Me, I’m Irish koozie is sitting unused at the end of the picnic table, so Jack appropriates it. He climbs up to sit on top of the table, feet on the bench, and watches as Lucy spreads out their tent.

“Mallet, babe?” Lucy turns around. “Oh, hi, Jack.”

“Hi, Luce.” Jack waves. “Want a beer?”

“After I get the tent up, thanks.” She slides a hair tie off her wrist and wraps her hair up in a bun.

“Mallet’s in my bag.” Aneurin shoves their cooler into the shade under the picnic table. Maybe Lucy brought deviled eggs. She usually brings deviled eggs. Jack can’t think of a polite way to ask without making it too obvious that he would like a deviled egg now, please.

Lucy unzips a duffle bag sitting to the side of the collapsed tent and digs through the contents, coming up with a rubber-headed mallet. She efficiently stakes down the corners of the tent while Aneurin sets up two more camp chairs and adds a bundle of firewood to the supply by the firepit. As she starts snapping the tent poles together, he joins her. “I think the orange one goes next.”

“No,” Lucy says. “They match the pockets, see?”

“But it’s orange on top.”

“OK,” Lucy says tolerantly. “Give it a try.” She steps back a pace and watches with her arms crossed.

Jack suspects that Lucy’s right, but things seem to be moving along fine without his input, so he keeps his mouth shut. Aneurin’s trying to flex one of the poles into a clip on the side of the tent. He bends it far enough that it looks in danger of snapping, and then the entire pole assembly twists over itself and smacks Aneurin in the face.

Jack holds back laughter, but Lucy’s got no reason to show any restraint; she laughs so hard she has to sit down. Aneurin walks over to her, trying to maintain some dignity, and offers her a hand up. As soon as she meets his eyes, he’s laughing too. Lucy pulls herself to her feet and kisses him.

From his spot on the picnic table, Jack thinks -- unaccountably -- of Harry. Which is stupid. It’s been more than a month, and he’s got no reason to think he’ll ever see Harry again. But when he thinks about him, which he probably does too much of, it’s mostly not even about the sex. (Mostly.) It’s more about the rest of the night, the sense of possibility. That’s what he wants. Somebody to laugh with all the time. Somebody to be that fucking delighted with.

Aneurin and Lucy are on opposite sides of the tent now, slotting the poles neatly into place. Jack reminds himself that Harry left, that Harry doesn’t have any interest in him. He got his test results last week, confirming that he doesn’t have any unpleasant reasons to remember Harry. It’s time to move on. He needs to stop thinking about Harry. He needs to stop looking for Harry in every bar he walks into. And he definitely needs to stop jacking off in the shower to the memory of Harry’s gravel and molasses voice saying “I want you to fuck me.”

***

The conference call is in the middle of the day for their Japanese subsidiary, but it’s after 7pm in Jack’s time zone when he finally gets off the phone and walks home from the office. The August heat hasn’t let up nearly enough to keep him from sweating through his work clothes. Sushi from the place in his building seemed like a good idea in the morning, but after 90 minutes on the phone with Japan, he’s had enough of the entire country. It’s too hot to cook anything. He’s got cereal, and the milk in the fridge is probably still good.

He’s doing better at not thinking about Harry. It’s been a couple of weeks, maybe. As more time passes, the suddenness of Harry’s appearance and the completeness of his disappearance, combined with the alcohol haziness of Jack’s memories, makes the whole thing seem more and more like a dream, like something he made up. But as Jack rounds the corner onto his street, something about the profile of the person peering at the call box outside of his building looks familiar, even from halfway down the block.

Jack slows down and tells himself he’s only seeing what he wants to see. The person’s got sunglasses on; Jack can barely see his face. Still, he slides his phone out of the bag and switches it to mute as he approaches, watching the figure hunched over at the callbox. The tails of an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt hang down as he pokes slowly and deliberately at the buttons. As Jack gets closer to the apartment entrance, he wonders how long it takes to scroll through the top half of the alphabet to get to Lowden. Long enough for Jack to almost decide it’s not Harry after all. Then long enough for the unpleasant thought that maybe it’s Harry, but he’s looking for somebody else. It’s a big apartment complex; Harry could be hooking up with someone else who lives here. He considers turning around and circling the block until Harry safely disappears.

Just then, Harry punches a button and straightens up. Jack looks at his phone. A beat later, it buzzes in his hand. He picks up. “This is Jack.” His voice echoes back at him from the callbox. This close, he can pick out the pattern of palm trees and station wagons on Harry’s shirt.

Harry doesn’t look behind him. He bends back down toward the speaker. “Hello,” he says, slowly, slowly, and every nerve in Jack’s body remembers that tar pit of a voice. “It’s Harry.”

“I know,” Jack says. “Your shirt is ridiculous.”

Harry jumps and looks wildly up and down the building before he turns around. He smiles when he spots Jack. “Heyyyy,” he says, pushing his sunglasses up on top of his head, his tone mildly offended. “I like this shirt.”

Jack lowers his phone and disconnects the call. “That doesn’t mean it’s not ridiculous.” His mind’s trying to reconcile the Harry here in front of him with the one from his hazy memories. He looks better and worse at the same time. He’s cleaned up, looking like he may be coming from work instead of a kickball game. His hair is brushed back instead of sticking out from behind a bandana. He’s shaved his juvenile scattering of stubble. But all the little imperfections that Jack’s memory fuzzed over are back. A couple of blemishes on his forehead, eyes slightly asymmetrical, tattoos more stark and numerous than Jack remembered.

There’s a moment of awkward silence. Jack grips the strap of his bag over his chest, not sure what else to do with his hands. Harry hasn’t reached for him, so he’s not going to reach back. 

“Sorry to just… show up.” Harry plucks his sunglasses off the top of his head, rakes his hand back through his hair, and resettles the sunglasses in place.

“No, no, it’s fine.” Jack digs his keycard out of his bag. “You want to come up?”

“Sure.” Harry steps to the side so that Jack can unlock the door. “That’d be good.”

It’s impossible to hit the elevator buttons without thinking of the last time they were here. Jack faces the door, watching the floors tick off. The ride to the fourth floor, full of possibility last time, is now just painfully slow. All Jack can think about is pushing Harry against the elevator wall. 

Harry gestures at Jack’s clothes as they walk down the hall toward Jack’s apartment. “You just get off work?”

“Yeah, Japan.” To Harry’s quizzical look, he adds, “Conference call. It’s tomorrow there. The future.”

“Do you ever have to go there?” Harry leans his shoulder against the wall next to the door.

Jack twists his keys in the lock. “Just once, last year.”

“Cool.” Harry follows Jack into the apartment. “I’d love to go to Tokyo. It’s, like, tops on my list.”

“It’s pretty great,” Jack says. He dumps his bag beside the table. “We’ve got a call center there, and one in Nagano.” 

“What do you do?” 

“I’m on an inside sales strategy team.” Jack can’t believe they didn’t discuss this. “I do a lot of numbers.” Turning his back to Harry, he digs in the fridge. “Want a beer?” He pops the cap off of a bottle of Rolling Rock and tosses the bottle opener back onto the counter. God, what a long day, and it’s so fucking hot out there.

Harry’s got a funny look on his face. “No,” he says, after a pause. He’s leaning up against the other side of the island, opposite Jack, hands on the edge of the countertop so Jack can see an anchor tattoo on one wrist. “Actually…” Harry blows out a breath through pursed lips and sets his shoulders. “I’m pregnant.”

Jack chokes down the gulp of beer in his mouth. His stomach feels far away, like it’s clawing its way slowly back up from his knees. He puts down his bottle too fast and too hard, clacking against the granite countertop. Things he’s barely even thought about having, or wanting, are disappearing behind slammed doors… money, autonomy, the years of life he expected to enjoy before getting married, someday, and maybe having kids, after that, eventually. 

"It's yours," Harry finally says, unnecessarily. As if he’d be here otherwise.

“Fuck.” It comes out faint, hoarse. Jack can’t think of anything more useful to say.

"There’s, like, a scan thing next week." Harry's hand drifts toward his stomach, fingers curling together. He doesn't look pregnant. Maybe somehow this isn't actually happening. "I thought, if you wanted..." 

Jack wants this to not be happening, he wants to have used a fucking condom, he wants Harry to be someplace else taking care of this quick and tidy like you’re supposed to, he wants anything but whatever is happening. “Fuck,” he says again, louder now. The granite’s cool under the fists he’s clenched to stop his hands from shaking.

Harry’s hand darts away from his stomach, back to the edge of the counter. "Look, never mind. Just, now you know.” He backs away a step, palms up. “I won't bother you again." He's out the door while Jack’s still telling himself to breathe, before it occurs to Jack to stop him.

***  


After Harry leaves, Jack shoves his beer down the counter and into the sink. It thuds against the stainless steel, liquid hissing out of the bottle and down the drain. He pulls out the drawer closest to the end of the island and burrows past a stained stack of takeout menus and several sets of paper-wrapped chopsticks to extract a pipe and a rolled-up baggie. He packs the bowl on the countertop, generously. The end of the world is no time to ration weed.

The sliding glass door next to his couch opens onto a balcony railing without a balcony, like a practical joke he’s willingly paying rent for. The feature doesn’t seem good for anything except exhaling lungfuls of smoke, which Jack does once, twice, and then a third time, because fuck everyone who’s ever said marijuana lowers sperm count. Then he turns on the ball game and lies on his couch like a corpse and tries very hard not to think about anything except the batting order.

Something wakes him up in the middle of the night, and he slides out of bed to crack the blinds open. The halogen glow of the streetlight below his window illuminates a motionless sidewalk and a street lined with tightly parked cars. He leans against the window frame, the edge digging into his forehead. Fuck, fuck,  _ fuck _ , how could he be so stupid?

He goes back to sleep, nominally at least, until the sky starts to lighten and he gives it up and goes for a run. It takes about a mile and a half for his head to clear, running unseeing through his neighborhood and the park before he hits the lake path. Then it occurs to him: even assuming Harry’s pregnant, how does he know it’s his? Harry came out of nowhere. Jack doesn’t know anything about him. This could be somebody else’s problem. Somebody else who’s tangled his hand in Harry’s hair, pulled his head back to kiss the smirk off his face.  _ Fuck. _

Jack’s useless at work that day, going through the motions of a Powerpoint while the city skyline shimmers in the July heat outside the conference room windows to his left. Harry’s out there, somewhere, probably blaming Jack for everything. Probably right about that. God, if this has Jack fucked up, what must Harry be feeling? He’s the one stuck with something inside him, capital-A Alien-like, a conquering parasite, and it’s all Jack’s fault.

Jack heads to the airport before dawn the next morning, making a quick trip to a client’s home office in St. Louis. It’s easier than being at his desk. At least he’s moving, caught up in the familiar rhythms of a business lunch and an afternoon talking shop and charming the corner office. That night, he paces around a nondescript room in a hotel by the airport. Harry’s walked out of his apartment twice now without leaving his number, without even telling Jack his last name, and Jack’s done nothing about it. It’s possible that Jack owes him an apology. He wants to see Harry again, to apologize. To get some answers. To just… see him again. And, conveniently, he’s got a reason to. A fucked-up reason, sure, but somehow their lives have collided in this weird and awful way and the least Jack can do is not be a dick about it.

LinkedIn’s list of Harrys in their area is overwhelming, and Googling various combinations of Harry and kickball and their city is fruitless. Jack can’t think of any other search terms. On Friday, when he and Tom walk over to grab lunch at the Middle Eastern place a couple of blocks from the office, he’s trying to figure out if there’s a not-creepy way to get in touch with the kickball league manager and ask for the contact information for the team with the black shirts. Or he could go to a game, maybe, it’s probably easier to get a schedule than it is to get contact information. Maybe if he had a schedule he could just find the team before a game instead of actually going to a game, which would be weird, especially if Harry’s actually there, although finding Harry in person would be less awkward than trying to get a message through a teammate… “ _ Jack _ ,” Tom says, clearly not for the first time. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Jack says, following Tom into the restaurant. “Sorry. Just distracted. End of quarter stuff.”

“You want to get it to go?”

“Nah, I’ve got time.” He’s got a stack of contracts in his inbox, but he’d be just as distracted back at his desk as he is here. He scrubs his knuckles over his beard and tries to focus on the menu. What’s he supposed to do if he can’t find Harry? Just wait until he shows up on the doorstep again, maybe next time with a baby? What if he never hears from him again? What if 20 years from now somebody shows up claiming to be his kid? Should he be asking for a paternity test? How does that even work? Is it even something that can happen now, or does he have to wait until the, the… baby…

He picks something halfway down the menu at random. 

“I think Barry’s getting people together for happy hour today,” Tom says while they’re waiting for their food.

“Great.” Alcohol sounds like the best possible idea. “God, do I need a drink.”

Barry and Tom are trying to decide where to go when Jack joins them in the lobby at 5:15. “Tiebreaker,” Barry says to Jack. “Pick someplace quick, don’t give Fionn an excuse to bail.”

Fionn snaps his head back into the conversation, as if he wasn’t looking longingly at the elevator to the parking garage where his bike locker is. “Is Aneurin coming?” 

“Nah, he’s gotta work late.” Barry throws a couple of shadow punches at Jack and starts to walk backwards toward the revolving doors. “Usual Bruce Wayne shit.”

“How about that German place?” Jack says, as carefully casual as he can manage. “We haven’t been there in a while.”

Barry stops short. “Oh, you think you’re gonna get laid again?” It sounds way too loud over the distance that Barry’s paced back from them. “Hey, what happened to that clumsy motherfucker you hooked up with last time?”

Jack’s face goes hot. “...no idea,” he says, a beat too late.

Tom’s eyebrows rise. “The German place sounds good,” he says, quickly. He’s still watching Jack when he adds, “Fionn, you on board?”

Fionn shrugs. “Sure.”

Barry wraps Fionn in a headlock and starts to drag him toward the door. Jack ducks Tom’s stare and follows on their heels.

He sees the table full of kickball t-shirts as soon as they walk into the bar. Barry, oblivious, snags a table on the opposite side of the room, and Jack has to crane his neck to verify that Harry’s not with the kickball team. He wasn’t exactly expecting him to be, but it’s a letdown anyway. “No boots, no pickles,” he tells Barry. Tom and Fionn laugh.

Barry doesn’t look up from the bar menu. “No fun.”

Jack bides his time through the first round of pints before making his way to the restroom. On his way back, he circles around the edge of the bar, slipping his lanyard over his head and tucking the keycard into his pocket, and approaches the kickball table. It’s a coed team, apparently: four girls in heavy makeup and four guys with at least six arms covered in tattoos. Looks like Harry fits right in.

Nobody notices him, so he stands a pace back from the table, waiting for an opening. They’re all focused on some guy with ratty facial hair telling a loud story. After everyone cracks up at the punchline, there’s a pause. Jack steps toward the table. “Is one of you Niall?”

All heads turn toward him. One of the girls gives him a once-over that’s not even remotely subtle, and sniffs, like Jack’s been found wanting.

“I’m Niall,” the only guy without tattoos says cautiously. His back’s to the direction Jack approached from; Jack had barely noticed him. “Who’re you?” 

“You’re Harry’s friend, right?” Jack tries to skip Niall’s question. He doesn’t have any idea how to identify himself. Nobody looks like they have any idea who Jack is. Maybe they don’t even know Harry’s pregnant ( _ maybe Harry isn’t pregnant _ , a small voice in the back of Jack’s head says.)

“Who’s asking?” the face scruff says, looking murder at Jack, and that’s enough confirmation that Niall knows Harry.

Jack ignores the loud dangerous one with the pathetic beard and tells Niall, “I’m trying to get in touch with him. Could you give me his number?”

“How about you give me yours,” Niall says, guarded. “I’ll pass it along, and he’ll be in touch if he wants to be.” He shifts his elbow onto the table and looks at Jack expectantly.

Niall doesn’t have his phone out, and Jack has no objection to avoiding the familiarity of having his number in Niall’s phone. Instead, he fishes a business card out of his wallet. It seems kind of wrong to use it for this purpose, but his card’s got his mobile number on it and it’s surely a better option than scrawling it on a coaster, especially when he’s got no pen and nobody at the table looks inclined to loan him one. Handing the card over -- his unbent business card, with a recognizable corporate logo and his name on it -- also makes him feel a little bit more credible. Like he really is the responsible adult he tells himself he is, as opposed to a drunk fuck-up who’s possibly fathered the illegitimate child of some guy whose last name he doesn’t even know.

Niall balances the card by its corners between his thumb and middle finger. “Right, I’ll give it to Harry.” He turns back to the table, where two of the girls are feeding each other bites of pretzel. Jack understands that he’s been dismissed.

“I got it, Ni,” Jack hears someone else say as he walks away. He glances over his shoulder. A guy with a NASA ballcap is holding out his hand to Niall, eyebrows raised behind his delicate glasses. Niall gives him Jack’s card, looking reluctant, and Jack makes his way back across the bar to his own table.

“You got a thing for kickball dorks now?” Barry asks as Jack sits back down.

“Fuck off,” says Jack, with no bite to it.

Barry does not fuck off. He’s craning his neck, looking across the room at the kickball table. “Is that guy from last time here?”

“Harry,” Jack reminds him. “No, but I might see him again.” That seems accurate enough.

“You might?” asks Tom, sharp-eyed.

Barry saves him before Tom can press the question. “Hey, has he got a friend for Fionn? That blonde chick with the braids is pretty cute.”

“Stop pointing!” Jack hisses at Barry and slaps his hand down.

“I doubt she’s available,” Fionn says drily. “She’s literally holding hands with the girl next to her.”

“That one’s an amazon,” Tom observes. “Looks like she’d rip your throat out if you tried to hit on the blonde one.”

“Just my type,” Barry says with relish. “Think they’d be up for a foursome, Fionn?”

Fionn looks like he wants to die. Jack piles on, anything to keep the focus away from himself. “How about the one in the NASA hat? He looks like your type.”

“I don’t have a type,” Fionn mumbles, face turning a shade of red that suggests that the guy holding Jack’s business card could absolutely be Fionn’s type.

“We could lure him over and trip him for you, Fionn,” Barry says. “Too bad  _ somebody’s _ so opposed to another boot.”

Jack changes the subject to the five different kinds of sausages on the menu, which keeps Barry busy with bad sausage jokes for the next two rounds of pints. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the kickball team get up to leave. He tries not to watch them, or to think that his best shot is walking out the door. His business card seems like such a fragile link to rely on, likely to vanish into any number of cracks between here and Harry.

***

As it turns out, giving Niall his card is enough for Jack to sleep easier that night. Maybe he’ll hear from Harry, maybe he won’t. If he doesn’t, hopefully at least it won’t be because Harry thought Jack didn’t want to hear from him. He’s not even thinking about it on Sunday, when he’s watching the ball game at Barry’s and his phone buzzes with a text. Jack glances down at the notification on his lockscreen. His pulse kicks up when he sees the unfamiliar number and the message:  _ this is harry _ .

He unlocks his phone and waits, but that’s all there is. Twenty minutes pass. Finally, Jack sends back  _ thanks for getting in touch _

He waits. Nothing. 

He tries again.  _ sorry i didn’t say much the other day _ . Typing bubbles appear, then disappear. Nothing happens. 

The inning ends and the game goes to commercial. Barry’s looking at him. “What are you staring at?”

“Nothing.” Jack tosses the phone next to him on the couch and ignores it until the next out. It’s stupid to be stressed out about this. Harry obviously hates him. It’s not like there’s anything he can say that’s going to make a difference, or anything that’s going to make this any worse. One more try, he resolves, and sends  _ could we meet up for a drink?  _ He immediately locks his phone and turns it face down.

Another half inning later, his phone buzzes against the cushion. He stubbornly refuses to leap at it, waiting until Barry goes to grab another beer.  _ not drinking much these days _ , says the reply. Fine, whatever, Jack’s done. He tried. Harry can go on and be pregnant or whatever and never text Jack again and he won’t care, he won’t care one bit.

It takes another inning for it to hit Jack. Of course Harry’s not fucking drinking. He grabs for his phone.  _ shit, sorry, that was dumb. _

Harry sends back a string of nonsense emojis. Most of them look like… limes? Jack doesn’t know what it means, but at least it doesn’t sound negative. He’s still squinting at his screen, trying to decode, when Harry starts typing again.  _ do u want to come to the ultrasound thursday? _

Jack assumes Ultrasound is some club he hasn’t heard of. He googles it. All that comes up are hospitals and wiki pages about medical imaging. Halfway down the first page of results, he figures it out. It’s not a club. It’s... a pregnancy thing. Harry wants him to come to some hospital thing, some medical thing. Some  _ baby _ thing.

There’s nothing on his calendar, but Harry’s got no reason to know that. Jack can make any excuse he wants. He can tell Harry anything. Or, he realizes, nothing at all. He doesn’t even have to respond to this message.

He types  _ ok, what time? _ and hits send before he can change his mind. It’s the right thing to do. And anything’s better than not seeing Harry at all.

***

Jack goes into work early on Thursday and puts a long lunch meeting on his calendar. Nobody’s going to check where he is. He’ll stay late that evening and it’ll average out to a full day of work, but slipping out of the office in the middle of the morning and driving up to the hospital through the unfamiliar midday traffic patterns still feels vaguely illicit. 

The wide doors at the hospital slide open automatically for everyone, but Jack feels specifically seen as he approaches. He skulks through the bright white hallways with his chin tucked down, following signs to the elevator bank. Every cover story he can think of seems more and more far-fetched the closer he gets to the imaging department.

There’s nobody in the waiting room he recognizes, which is a relief even if it isn’t a surprise. He’s scanning the room a second time, hoping he hasn’t missed Harry, when the medical assistant at the front desk nudges a clipboard toward him and asks if she can check him in. “Oh, no, I’m meeting, um… someone,” Jack stutters, wondering how the hell he’s supposed to describe Harry. They’re not exactly friends.

He finds an empty seat in the far corner of the room, doing his best to disappear. A couple of people in the waiting room are obviously pregnant, but others are in orthopedic boots or don’t have any obvious reason to be at a hospital. Maybe sitting here doesn’t visibly, painfully mark him as one half of an illegitimate pregnancy.

Harry walks in a few minutes later and goes straight to the reception desk without spotting Jack. Jack watches him from his corner. Harry looks the same as he did last week, hair brushed up high and sunglasses dragging down the loose collar of his t-shirt. Only the print on his Hawaiian shirt’s changed. The medical assistant laughs at something Harry says while she clips a packet of papers together for him, and he props his hands on the counter and grins at her. All the way across the room, Jack can see the side of his mouth pulled back crookedly. It’s hard for Jack to believe that this person willingly had sex with him.

Harry turns away from the desk holding a clipboard of paperwork, and Jack lifts his hand in a half wave. Harry smiles and makes his way across the room. “Thanks for coming,” he says, sliding into the seat next to Jack’s.

“No problem,” Jack says, and then wonders why he’d say that. This is nothing but problems.

Harry props the clipboard against one knee and slides a ballpoint pen out of the clip at the top. Jack watches out of the corner of his eye as Harry works his way down the stack of forms, following the pen to learn that his full name is Harry Edward Styles. Jack repeats it to himself, memorizing the search terms to use if Harry ever disappears again.

The next bit of information the form yields up is Harry’s birthdate. Jack’s eyebrows raise at the year -- 1994 -- and he cringes when he does the math and realizes that Harry’s only 23, four years younger than him. Practically the same age as Calum. It’s like he’s knocked up his younger brother. He wonders if Harry tends bar part-time and smokes a lot of weed and lives with six roommates in a five-bedroom house teetering on the edge of condemnation. God, he’d be so pissed if Calum got pregnant. Or, he realizes uncomfortably, pissed at anybody dumb enough to get Calum pregnant.

Harry’s halfway down the page now, pen scratching at a blank space headed with an unfamiliar acronym.

Jack can’t help asking. “What’s EDD?”

“Due date,” Harry says, without looking up. He moves on down the form and Jack stares at the date.

February 4. Next year. It seems like a long time away. Lots of stuff can happen before then. The World Series. Football season. Christmas. Something to make all of this go away.

The medical assistant calls Harry’s name just as he finishes the last of the paperwork. She takes his clipboard and leads them through a set of double doors and down a hallway to a dim room. Harry hops up on the exam table without being told, crinkling its paper cover under his worn-in boots. Jack looks around the room. The only chair is right next to the table, presumably for happy fathers or supportive friends or something. Jack sits there anyway.

“Here, tuck this into your waistband, under your belly,” the technician says, handing Harry a folded paper drape. He pushes up the hem of his t-shirt, and oh, there’s those leafy tattoos. Jack’s hit with the memory of how they looked between his splayed fingers, the heel of his hand pressing into Harry’s hipbone. What a useless fragment for his subconscious to spit out. If his brain’s going to start serving up lost images from that night, Jack has a lot of other higher-priority requests. But all he gets is the memory of how it felt to drag his hand flat down Harry’s chest, thumb skimming over the butterfly tattoo, Harry’s stomach tensing under his fingers. He shifts in the hard plastic chair, taking a deep breath of hospital-scented air. This is so not what he should be thinking about right now.

The leaves look a little different than Jack remembers. Not misshapen, exactly, just a little bit… rounded. He’s not imagining it, he realizes, noticing that Harry’s jeans are fastened with a hair tie cinched through the buttonhole and looped over the button.

Harry’s giving him a disapproving look. “Don’t judge,” he says, unlooping the hair tie and scrunching the waistband down below his belly.

Jack scoots back from the table. “Not judging.” He’s not. He’s just… noticing. Noticing the line of fine hairs that trails down to a red waistband under Harry’s jeans, before Harry covers everything with the paper drape. He’s got to stop thinking like this, he’s at a  _ hospital _ , and given the consequences of the last time he fucked Harry he really shouldn’t want to ever do it again.

Fortunately the technician gets to work, and Jack’s got a reason to look away from Harry and toward the monitor in front of them. He leans his elbow on the exam table to watch the indecipherable gray whorls slide and bulge over the screen. 

“There we go,” the technician says, and something recognizable materialises. A big head, one twig leg sticking out; it looks more like the idea of a baby than an actual thing that is inside Harry, a foot from Jack’s elbow. 

Harry breathes in sharply. 

“He doesn’t look like much of a kickball player,” Jack says, looking at the screen so he doesn’t have to look at Harry.

.Harry lets out a surprised, shaky bark of laughter, and the technician tells him to stop moving so she can take measurements. “My  _ daughter _ ,” Harry emphasizes, “is not going to play any contact sports.”

“Since when is kickball a contact sport?” 

“It is when I play it.”

On screen, the technician’s setting points and drawing lines between them. “Also that’s definitely a boy,” Jack says, “so what sport’s he going to play?”

“Golf, either way,” Harry answers decisively.

“You golf?” Jack asks, surprised.

“Yeah, Niall and I go out sometimes.” Jack is irrationally reassured to learn that Harry golfs. It seems like a mark of credibility, or commonality. Something that belongs in Jack’s world.

“There’s the heartbeat,” the technician says, interrupting them. She zooms in and slides an arrow toward a quivering spot on the screen. It’s moving so quickly; Jack feels his own heartbeat speed up, maybe in sympathy, maybe because Harry’s reached down to grab his hand, squeezing his fingers tight. Jack looks up at him. Harry’s staring at the screen, mesmerized, his eyes filling with tears. Jack looks away quickly. The alien blur on the monitor pulses abstractly.  _ Mine _ , Jack tries to think, and it’s ill-fitting. The abstract blob up there doesn’t look like it has anything to do with him. But he doesn’t like the idea of anyone else here in his seat, counting the heartbeats, gripping Harry’s hand.

***

Jack squints as he emerges into the clean light of the hallway, feeling dazed. He checks his phone as they walk silently back to the elevator. The gulf between the dim quiet of the ultrasound room and his thirty three new emails seems far too vast to be bridged with the ten-minute drive back to the office.

He turns to Harry. “You want to get lunch?”

“I can’t,” Harry says, regretfully. “I’m supposed to go for a blood draw.”

“I can go with,” Jack says, and immediately regrets how weird that sounds. Harry’s clearly a functioning adult who doesn’t need company for a blood draw. Jack reminds himself that he’s also a functioning adult who should feel capable of being alone with his thoughts right now, and also that he knows Harry’s name and phone number. He ought to be able to let him out of his sight without worrying that Harry will disappear forever.

“Really?” Harry looks surprised. “You want to go with?”

“Yeah, sure,” Jack says. He’s got questions, one of which is how to get a paternity test, and hanging around the medical establishment seems like a good way to maybe get some answers. “Where do we go?”

Across the street to another medical building is the answer to that, and Jack follows Harry down a couple of floors, over a skybridge, and up another elevator. “What do they need your blood for?” he asks as they walk.

“I’ve got no idea,” Harry says. “They keep taking it, though. Fucking vampires.”

“Is everything, like, okay?” Jack has no idea about how any of this works, no idea if all this blood stuff is normal.

“With my blood?” Harry grimaces. “Sure.” He opens a door with a laboratory logo on it and Jack follows him inside, mentally kicking himself for the world’s stupidest question. Of course everything’s not okay.

“You want me to wait out here?” Jack asks after Harry checks in and the receptionist points him around a corner.

Harry raises his eyebrows for a moment, considering. “Nah, you can come with.”

He greets the phlebotamist with a hug. “You’re back!” she exclaims. She inclines her chin toward Jack. “And who’s this?”

“This is Jack,” Harry says, in a tone that suggests she should draw her own conclusions.

“He’s my favorite,” the phlebotomist tells Jack, patting Harry on the shoulder. “Good veins.”

Harry takes a seat in a tall chair and Jack leans his shoulder against the wall next to him. He feels too big in the tiny nook of the lab. As the phlebotomist swabs Harry’s arm and ties a band around it. Harry looks away from her and rests his forehead on his other hand, facing Jack. “You’ve got a thing about needles?” Jack asks, which seems hard to believe, given that the phlebotomist is feeling out a vein in the middle of at least four tattoos.

“I get a little woozy,” Harry says defensively.

“Go on, hold his hand,” the phlebotomist briskly directs Jack as she unwraps a needle and a length of tubing.

Jack extends his hand, flat. When Harry takes it, Jack knits their fingers together as loosely as he can, like Harry’s hand is a bird that might want to take flight at any moment.

“Can’t watch.” Harry looks past their hands at the floor. The phlebotomist pricks his arm, and Harry’s grip tightens. Jack watches the red line of blood fill the vial. This is his fault. They had sex, and now Harry’s gritting his teeth while lab vampires suck his blood.

Harry lets go of his hand as soon as the needle’s out. He goes right back to charming the phlebotomist as she tapes a wad of cotton over the puncture. Jack can still feel the phantom presence of Harry’s fingers interlaced with his.

“Lunch now?” Harry asks as they leave the lab.

Jack checks his phone. Forty nine new emails. “Yeah, if you’ve got time.”

They end up at a nondescript sandwich place down the street from the hospital, full of people in scrubs. Harry picks apart the roll that comes with his cup of soup, filling the plate with little pills of bread that pile up between the untouched soup and the untouched cup of fruit on the other side of the plate. When he notices Jack watching, he spears a chunk from the fruit cup and holds up his fork toward Jack. “This is the fruit this week.”

Jack looks at him, confused. “What do you mean?”.

“Plum,” Harry says. “There’s an app that tells you what fruit it’s the size of every week. This week it’s plum. Twelve weeks.” Harry pops the chunk of plum into his mouth.

“So,” Jack beckons generally in the direction of Harry’s midsection, “so, is this definitely a thing that’s going to happen?” He has to ask, even with Harry talking about his daughter playing golf, even with Harry tearing up at the heartbeat. Come to think of it, that stupid kickball joke of Jack’s was the first time either of them said anything that suggested what’s happening here is an actual baby, and he wouldn’t want Harry to think he’s some kind of pro-life asshole who assumes this is a done deal. He ought to make it clear that he’s supportive either way, just in case those weren’t happy tears.

Harry flinches back a bit. “Not much way around it now.”

“Well, I mean, there is, right?” Jack says pragmatically.

He doesn’t know Harry well enough to read his expression, but suddenly it doesn’t look good. Jack frantically backpedals. “Not that I’m like,  _ you should do that _ , I mean, it’s totally your decision, whatever you want to do…”

Harry just stares at him, head tilted slightly to the side. Jack keeps trying to talk his was out of the hole he’s dug himself into. “I feel like this whole thing is kind of my fault and I don’t want to make anything harder for you, and whatever works for you, it’s fine. It’s fine.” He scoots back in his chair, palms up. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Harry says, after a long pause. “I mean, I thought about it.” 

“Can I ask… why not?” Jack says cautiously.

“Sure.” Harry fiddles with the spoon in his soup bowl. “I just… I know I want kids, and I didn’t really want one  _ now _ , but I don’t, like, not want one enough to not… have this one.” He looks up. “Sorry.”

“Oh,” Jack says, feeling horribly guilty. He was barely following that answer, just getting pulled into the sticky spaces Harry leaves between the words, but the apology at the end feels horribly out of place. He’s the one who’s done this, ruined Harry’s life, and maybe Harry doesn’t even know how much Jack’s to blame. “Don’t…”

“It’s not your fault.” Harry smirks at him, like he’s read Jack’s mind. “Pretty sure we were both there.” 

“Yeah, but…” It really doesn’t seem like the right time for that fucking smirk. Makes him think Harry knows something he doesn’t, remembers something he’s lost. “I mean, I was the one…”

“You didn’t do anything I didn’t want.” Harry’s smirk gets smirkier. Smirk volume eleven. Dangerous levels of smirk. 

“Okay,” Jack says. He looks down at his sandwich. “Um, did we talk…?”

“Yeah.” Harry leans back in his chair. “Pretty dumb, huh?”

Jack laughs humorlessly. “Pretty fucking dumb.”

“We’re great decisionmakers,” Harry drawls. “Obviously just the kind of people who should have a baby.”

Jack’s laugh this time is almost a real one. “Pass on those great decisionmaking genes.”

“Really ensure the survival of the species.” Harry eats another piece of fruit.

It feels strange to be joking about the thing that’s been haunting Jack since the empty garbage can in his bathroom. How can Harry not blame him? He’d blame him, if he was Harry. He doesn’t deserve the absolution of knowing this was something he did with Harry, not to Harry. “How’d you figure out you were…?”

Harry’s eyes go wide and he blows out a breath, cheeks puffing. “It’s embarrassing.”

“Go on,” Jack demands. This could be good.

Harry groans and buries his face in his hands for a moment. “I passed out at work.”

“Like, full, on the ground, passed out?” It’s more dramatic than Jack bargained for. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” Harry shrugs and eats another piece of fruit. “It’s not a big deal, I was just dehydrated. I’ve been puking a lot.”

“You have the gait of a vomiter,” Jack says sagely.

“Do I?” Harry asks, his voice rising in pitch. “ _ Do I _ ?”

Jack sticks by his uninformed assessment. “Absolutely.”

“They say it gets better soon.” Harry rolls his eyes. “Anyway, they called 911, and the EMTs were like, ‘Any chance you could be pregnant?’ and, oh, shit.”

“Have you told anybody yet?” It’s a topic that’s weighed heavily on Jack. Who to tell. What to tell them. What they’re going to say when they find out that Jack’s gone and done the most irresponsible, life-altering thing possible. What he’s going to see on his mom’s face.

“Only my roommate,” Harry says. “I’m puking a lot and not drinking, so he kind of figured out something was up.” He takes a bite of soup, grimaces, and puts the spoon down. “And my mom, obviously. People say you’re supposed to wait until, like, the end of the first trimester.”

“When’s that?”

“Like next week. I’ll probably tell everyone if everything with the ultrasound looks good.”

Jack’s been worrying about how he’ll tell people, but this is the first time he’s thought about all the people Harry’s going to tell. People he doesn’t know are going to make assumptions about him. About him and Harry. Everyone’s going to know. This is going to be his life now, illegitimate father.

They carry their dishes to the bus tub and weave through tables full of blue scrubs on their way toward the door. “I’m headed this way,” Jack says once they’re outside, pointing back toward the hospital and its parking garage. “So… I’ll see you?” He can’t help making it a question.

“Yeah,” Harry says. “See you.” He tips Jack a salute and lopes off in the opposite direction. Jack watches him go for a moment, his skinny legs unsteady and the tails of his Hawaiian shirt flapping in the breeze, the baby riding along unseen but definitely there, definitely happening.


	3. Chapter 3

All of a sudden there are kids  _ everywhere _ . As Jack walks to the parking garage, every stroller on the sidewalk stands out like it’s under a spotlight. A school bus passes him on his way back to the office, going the opposite direction, and Jack watches it in the rearview mirror until it turns a corner.

The next morning, Jack arrives at work and finds himself walking into his office building behind a dad holding the hand of a little kid with rainboots and a backpack. Then he sees someone else carrying a baby in a car seat. Have there always been kids around work? He’s never noticed before. What are they doing here?

Beside the elevator bank, the dad and the rainbooted kid turn down a hallway that Jack’s never paid any attention to before. Jack pauses at the turnoff, curious. He waits until they disappear through a door at the end of the hallway, and then he walks quickly down the hall to inspect the colorful bulletin board next to the door. It’s covered in a neat collection of calendars and lunch menus and artwork by small children. Jack realizes this is the on-site day care, a feature he hasn’t thought once about since skimming through the employee handbook when he got hired five years ago.

The bulletin board is next to a square safety glass window. It frames a large room with a brightly patterned rug and very small tables, and toys everywhere, and lots of kids. Lots of kids.

The door opens, and the dad Jack followed emerges from the room. Jack studiously peurses the bulletin board, avoiding eye contact as the other man passes behind him down the hall. An older woman in a quilted vest leans out the open door. “Are you looking into child care?” she asks Jack in a motherly kind of way.

“Um,” Jack says, fighting the instinct to turn and flee, “...not really? Maybe, just looking …”

The woman gets a fond expression on her face. “Do you have a baby on the way?”

“Yeah?” Jack says cautiously. “I kind of do?” That’s it, he’s told someone. That wasn’t so bad. Maybe he can get away with only telling people he doesn’t know.

“Congratulations!” she says warmly. “Must be pretty early yet?”

“Something like that.” Jack rubs the back of his neck.

“Well, you’re smart to be thinking about this already,” she tells him, tapping a finger against the bulletin board. “The wait list is pretty long. You should get your name on there if there’s any chance you’ll be interested.”

This is all far too specific. Jack’s internal freak-out must be showing on his face. “It’s confidential,” the woman says, patting Jack on the arm. “If you haven’t told your department yet, it won’t get back there from us.” 

“...okay,” Jack says, weakly, and this child care worker who has seemingly made it her personal mission to usher Jack into parenthood tells him to hold on while she gets the paperwork.

As soon as she ducks back into the room, Jack considers retreating. But she reemerges with a clipboard and a pen before he makes up his mind. “Thanks,” he says, detaching a green form from the clipboard. “I’ll look it over.”

“Oh, go ahead and do it now.” She refuses the clipboard, pushing it back at him when he tries to hand it to her. “It’ll just take a minute, might as well get it done.”

“Um.” The paperwork wilts in Jack’s hand. He clips it back to the board.

The child care worker watches him expectantly. “If a spot comes up and you don’t need it, you can always turn it down. No commitment.”

It’s kind of nice to have somebody just tell him what to do about this entire situation. Jack fills out his name and contact information and puzzles over the blanks that ask for age of child (baby?) and preferred start date (spring?). After signing the form, he hands the clipboard back to his new parenthood mentor.

She smiles proudly at him. Jack feels buoyed by the approval. Somebody thinks he’s doing the right thing.

“You’ll get a confirmation email sometime in the next couple of days, then there are monthly updates with your spot on the list.” She sends Jack off with a pat on the back. “Such an exciting time!”

Jack hastily retreats to the elevators, panic chasing him down the hallway like a cresting wave. Day care. What else is coming? Bottles, diapers, child support.  _ College _ . So much money, so much money and so much  _ time _ . Eighteen years. How does it even work when he and Harry aren’t married, not even together, does Harry just keep the baby all the time? Is there custody? Does he have to actually… parent? Fuck, what is he supposed to  _ do _ ?

Harry’s the last person in the world he should be seeking reassurance from, but he spends the next few days half-writing texts to him anyway. Then he deletes each one before sending it. Everything he types sounds like a variation on, “Hey, it’s me, the guy who knocked you up and ruined your life.”

It takes a week for it to occur to him, one evening when he’s passing the produce section at the grocery store.  _ what’s the fruit this week? _ He sends it before he can second-guess himself.

Typing bubbles appear, their faint gray pulse echoing the feeling in Jack’s stomach as realizes Harry’s going to respond. The bubbles are quickly replaced with  _ KIWI KIWI KIWI KIWI _ .

Jack backtracks through the produce until he finds the small basket of kiwis, between the mangoes and the plantains. He balances one in his hand, its skin scratchy against his palm. It feels weighty. But that may be psychological.

His hand looks weird when he tries to take a picture. He holds the kiwi between his thumb and forefinger, but that’s no better. Finally, he flips the screen, holds the kiwi in front of his face, and takes a kiwi selfie. The result makes him look bemused and slightly concerned, which is accurate enough. He sends it to Harry.  _ niiiice _ , comes the response.

_ still puking? _ Jack asks, standing in the middle of the grocery store with his chicken breasts and Diet Coke in his basket at his feet, trying not to let go of the thin thread between them. Harry sends back a puke emoji. It’s a start.

He’s walking to work the following Monday, coffee in one hand, when his phone buzzes. Jack assumes it’s an email that can wait five minutes until he’s at his desk. But when the light turns red as he approaches the next crosswalk, he digs his phone out of his pocket, and is met with a single-word text from Harry:  _ nectarine _ . 

Jack edges his way to the front of the clutch of people waiting for the walk sign and practically runs across the street when the light changes. He pitches his half-finished coffee into the next garbage bin he passes and stops to devote both thumbs to a prompt response.  _ that’s the best one so far _

_ heyyyyyy i like kiwis _ , Harry responds, which cannot be allowed to pass unchallenged.

_ nobody likes kiwis, they’re hairy and gross _

_ fine, see if i tell you when its papaya week _

Jack wonders when papaya week is, wonders if Harry’s thought about telling him the fruit every week until then. But his taste in fruit is an outrage.  _ nobody likes papayas either _ , Jack types.

_ i love papayas _

_ they taste like armpit _ , Jack adds, feeling that this is an appropriate final word on the subject.  _ feeling better this week? _

_ yeah _ , Harry says, and then,  _ on my way to work _

If that’s a polite dismissal, Jack’s not going to push his luck.  _ same _ , he finishes. But it’s enough of an opening for him to ask, that evening, how Harry’s day was. Through scattered texts over the next few days he starts to fill in the prosaic blanks between his experiences of Harry as a force of nature: the electrical storm of that first night, the pregnant tornado that’s swept up all the pieces of his life and threatened to drop them down again mangled and out of place. As he learns Harry’s entirely average background information, it grounds Jack bit by bit. Harry grew up in a medium-sized city three hours away. He has a degree from the closest branch of the state university. He works at a school, which may explain why he doesn’t seem to dread the idea of a kid the way Jack does.

With every text exchanged, Jack looks for a reason to see Harry again. Suggesting it out of the blue seems strangely presumptuous, as if he’s colonized Harry’s body and shouldn’t be entitled to demand his time and attention as well. But he wants to see him, wants to see whether he looks pregnant, wants to be able to recognize every change in his silhouette.

Finally, Harry gives him an opening.  _ random question but do you have storage space at your place? _

Jack does, a narrow storage locker next to the parking garage. It’s got his camping gear and a couple of sleds from two winters ago when there was so much snow that Barry decided they should slide down the hilly block two streets over.  _ yeah, why? _

_ got a crib for free but there’s no room here _ . Jack’s stomach squirms in the way it always does at the tangible details of babyhood.  _ just need someplace to keep it til i can figure something out _

Jack immediately feels guilty about Harry having a baby and literally no place to put it, and then even guiltier because he can’t help.  _ def not enough space for a crib, sorry _

_ it goes into pieces if that helps _

That seems more reasonable. _ maybe. when do you need it? _

_ have to pick it up this weekend, you around saturday? _

Jack stops wondering whether or not his storage space is big enough. He’ll keep the damn crib parts in his living room if it gives him an excuse to see Harry.  _ Saturday works _ , he types immediately. And then, because Jack hasn’t been working his way up the sales division org chart without the ability to seize the opportunity for an upsell, he adds,  _ need help picking it up? _

On Saturday, Jack follows his phone’s directions across the interstate and down a series of arterials to a far corner of the city that couldn’t be any more different from his own neighborhood. The businesses that line the streets are halal meat shops and check cashing services, not dog day cares and gastropubs. The food trucks in underused parking lots sell actual tacos, not the Korean fusion kind. Five years in the city and Jack’s never come this direction before.

Harry’s waiting outside when Jack pulls over onto the gravel strip in front of a small stucco-walled apartment building. He still doesn’t look pregnant, although the gray hoodie he’s wearing makes it hard to tell. The bandana's back. As Harry folds his stupid legs into the passenger seat, Jack recognizes the corner of fabric poking out. He pinches his thumb and forefinger together against the memory of tugging the bandana askew over Harry’s forehead. “Where are we headed?” he asks, as he pulls back onto the street.

Harry names a close-in suburb, an exclusive one. Jack whistles. “Who lives there?”

“One of the teachers I work with,” Harry says. “Her husband works in television or something, he’s loaded. ‘S why I’m psyched to get their crib, it’s going to have a posh organic mattress or some shit like that.”

“Are you a teacher too?”

Harry snorts. “Nope. I’m a behavior tech.”

Jack laughs. “You’re officially no longer allowed to make fun of business words.”

“Behavior tech makes a lot more sense than ‘innovation unit.’”

“To you, maybe.” Jack merges onto the freeway, looking over his shoulder at traffic. “So what’s it mean?”

Harry explans that most of the kids at the school are somewhere on the autism spectrum. “I basically just work with them to manage behavior, take data, whatever. Teach some stuff one on one.”

“Do you like it?”

“Actually, yeah.” Harry sounds like he gets the question a lot. “The kids are sweet, most of the time. When they don’t bite.”

“Kids bite you?” Jack asks, incredulously.

“Eh,” Harry shrugs. “Not that often, but it happens.”

“Is your degree in education?”

Harry shakes his head. “Comparative humanities.” Ah, Jack realizes, one of those degrees that qualifies you to have a job, but not any particular job. Or apparently the kind of job where you get bit. “You don’t really need a degree, I’m just kind of good at figuring kids out. There’s a deal where work pays half the tuition if I go back and get my certification, like, a master’s program, but that’s probably not happening next year.”

Harry says it in a matter-of-fact tone, without any bitterness, so that Jack doesn’t even realize what he’s talking about until he glances over and sees Harry’s arm loosely curled across his stomach. Jack can’t understand how he’s so calm. If something had kept him from getting his MBA, he would have been angry, and disappointed, and scared about completely rewriting his plans. Harry’s just sitting serenely in the passenger seat, going to score a free crib. Putting this impossible thing together piece by piece.

Jack swallows guiltily. “Why comparative humanities?”

“It was interesting,” Harry says. “I got to read a lot, look at the art.”

Jack asks Harry about what he read and what he likes and by the time he starts to realize that Harry’s taste in literature is just as tragic as his taste in fruit, they’re passing a pair of stone piers that mark the entrance to an upscale subdivision of three-car garages and two-story entryways. Harry directs him to the driveway of a modern house jutting up high and awkward between two tastefully refurbished midcentury ramblers.

When Harry rings the doorbell, it doesn’t make a sound. Jack recognizes the lens above the smart doorbell button and realizes he’s probably being inspected on an iPad somewhere inside the house. 

A pretty blonde in yoga pants opens the door and greets Harry with a hug. “I’m so glad you brought somebody with you,” she says, looking over at Jack. “I know it’s not that heavy, but why risk it, right?” She holds out her hand. “I’m Julia.”

“Jack.” He shakes her hand, realizing too late that he should have asked Harry in the car if Julia’s aware of his role in the proceedings. At the hospital last week, Harry hadn’t told anyone that Jack was the father. Maybe Harry doesn’t want anyone to know. Especially his coworkers. It’s not like anybody wants their coworkers to know who they’ve fucked. But if she does know, he can’t come off like he’s pretending it’s not his. This is shaping up to be one of the most awkward interactions he’s ever had.

Harry peels off through an archway into a room with a leather couch and a large flatscreen that suggest it was once supposed to be a living room. At the moment, the trampoline and the hopping balls and the train tracks winding across the floor make it look much more like a playroom. A blonde boy is bent over the coffee table, a mess of colorful Legos spread out in front of him. Jack has no idea how old he is. He looks like he’s not tall enough to ride a roller coaster, but maybe tall enough for the bumper cars.

“Hi, Max. Harry sits down on the couch next to him. “Are those Minecraft Legos?”

Julia’s asking Jack about how big his car is and whether the back seat folds down. Jack has a hard time holding eye contact when he wants to glance past her at Harry, who’s holding his palm level as Max fills it with Lego figurines and explains the backstory behind each one. A girl, smaller than Max, abandons the toy garbage truck she’s been pushing around on the floor and advances on the coffee table. “You must be Carey,” Harry says to her. She ducks her head and grabs a half-constructed Lego device.

Julia motions for Jack to follow her up the stairs. “The crib’s in Carey’s room,” she says over her shoulder.

Behind them, Max screeches at his sister to give back his Legos and Carey dashes past the foot of the stairs in escape. “Should we…” Jack asks, looking down the stairs.

“Oh, no, Harry can handle that,” Julia says, breezily confident, which is all the more impressive because Jack doubts that he personally could handle the Lego-related altercation below them.

The stairway opens up to a wide upstairs hall with another couch and television. The double doors at the end of the hallway signify a master suite. A door closer to the stairs has several signs in marker-scrawled child’s handwriting taped to it, presumably Max’s room.

A large cardboard box sits on its side next to another door. “There’s the big girl bed,” Julia says. “You can see why we needed the crib out of here today.” Jack can’t see, exactly. There’s plenty of space. He’s never really thought about what parenthood would look like, but he realizes that unconsciously he’s assumed it would be something like this. Four bedrooms. A backyard. Probably an SUV in one of the three garages. A spouse who’s closer to Julia’s age than Harry’s.

He follows Julia into Carey’s room. Everything is so small. A little pink armchair. A dollhouse on a play table that doesn’t even come up to Jack’s knee. Small bundles of socks on top of the dark wood dresser. 

On the opposite side of the room from the dresser, there’s a crib in the same wood. It looks heavy and expensive. The carved details on the side that’s up against the wall make it look like it could be an adult headboard. Julia tugs the bare mattress out of the crib and onto the rainbow rug in the center of the room. ”This rolls up,” she says. “I can do that if you want to start breaking down the crib. There should be an Allen wrench on the windowsill over there.” She points at a long window high on the wall, the windowsill well above kid height.

The window looks out over a large backyard. As Jack reaches for the tool, he sees Max run out of the house toward an elaborate play structure. Harry follows, running on his tiptoes to stay just out of reach of Carey, who’s determinedly chasing him. He dodges her outstretched arms and pokes her in the stomach, and she shrieks with laughter. Something claws at Jack’s throat, equal parts want and terror.

“Is it up there?”

Jack jerks his head away from the backyard. “Yeah, got it.” He scoops up the Allen wrench and turns back toward the crib. “How does this work?”

“Take the bottom part out first, then do the bolts at the corners.” Julia’s on her knees on the rug, tying the mattress into a bulging roll. “I’ll go grab a ziploc for the screws.”

Jack sticks the Allen wrench into the first bolt he sees and starts twirling it. It’s not hard to figure out once he gets going. By the time Julia comes back he’s got the front of the crib off and the mattress frame on the floor. “Looking good,” Julia, popping open a ziploc bag with her fingers. She holds it out for Jack to deposit the screws into. “God, I’m so glad to get this thing out of here.”

“Bad crib?” Jack asks.

“Oh, no, it’s a great crib, it’s just… a lot of years, is all.” Jack pulls out another bolt and she steadies the end piece before it falls. “Do you have kids?”

“No,” Jack says automatically -- still true, still true for now -- and then realizes she must not know.

“Well, they’re more fun the older they get.”

“I’ll bet.” Fun is not a word that Jack has considered to be applicable to small children. He takes out the last bolt and lifts the end piece experimentally, deciding he can carry it by himself. “Think I’ll get this loaded.”

“I’ve got the other one.” Julia follows him out of the bedroom and down the stairs, Jack carefully maneuvering his piece to avoid grazing the walls.

The day’s heating up outside. Jack leans the crib end against the side of his car and pops the hatch. With the back seat dropped, both ends fit neatly. The side pieces, though, that’s going to be tight. On their second trip, Jack loads the back of the crib in through the hatch while Julia works from inside to angle it up against the ceiling behind the front seats. It’s probably going to fracture their skulls if Jack brakes suddenly, but otherwise it fits.

Julia disappears inside while Jack’s trying to stuff the bulky roll of the mattress clear of the hatch door. She emerges with a pile of fabric balanced between her palms. “Does Harry want the sheets?” Most of the folded crib sheets in the stack look pink. Jack’s hit with the superstitious conviction that accepting them would guarantee that the baby’s going to be a girl. As if he needed one more factor added on to the many ways in which he has no idea how to handle this situation.

“Um,” he says. “We don’t know…” Jack corrects himself. “Harry doesn’t know whether it’s a girl.” 

Julia’s hairline moves back the tiniest bit, the only indication she’s caught Jack’s screw-up. She shrugs. “When the kid pukes for the third time in a row, he’s not going to care whether the last spare sheet’s pink or blue.” She bundles the sheets into Jack’s hands. “Do me a favor and get them out of here, and Harry can Goodwill them if they’re not what he wants.”

“...okay,” Jack swallows, and deposits the sheets into the backseat, chanting  _ please don’t be a girl, please don’t be a girl _ to himself, as if that will make any difference.

Harry emerges from around the side of the garage, with Carey on his shoulders. In one smooth motion, he boosts her over his head and puts her down on her feet in front of him. Sticking his head in the passenger door, he inspects the crib. “Sick,” he says happily, running a hand along the dark wood. “Thanks, Jules.”

“This really won’t fit at your place?” Jack asks. It doesn’t look like much, all broken down, slotted into the back of his Golf.

“Nah.” Harry buckles his seat belt. “Our place is really small. And I’ve got the small bedroom. I’m going to have to, like, get a different bed so this’ll fit in there.” He looks at Jack, a crease between his eyebrows. “Are you sure you don’t mind?”

“Like I’m going to let you take this back to your place to trip over,” Jack says. “You’d fall and kill yourself.” He regrets saying anything. He wants these stupid crib parts in storage at his place, any tenuous link to keep Harry’s from disappearing again. 

***

The basket of lemons at the end of the fish counter catches Jack’s eye as he and Tom carry their lunches to the checkout at Whole Foods . “Hey,” he says, poking Tom with his deli box. “Can you hold this for a sec?”

“Sure.” Tom balances Jack’s box on top of his own. “Why are you taking a selfie with a lemon?” he asks Jack, quite reasonably.

“Hold on,” Jack says. The photo turns out decent on the first try, Jack having learned a few tricks through trial and error with the 14-week nectarine. He sends it to Harry and pockets his phone. “So,” he starts, depositing the lemon back in the basket. Maybe there’s some other way to explain the lemon. Maybe he doesn’t really have to do this.

“Sooooo,” Tom prompts. Someone leans past them to order a pound of sturgeon.

Jack takes his lunch back from Tom. He has to do this sometime. He has to tell somebody. Tom’ll be nice about it. “You remember Harry, from the bar?”

Tom’s eyebrows go up. “The kickball one,” he says, and because kickball’s the least of what Jack associates with Harry these days, it takes him a second to realize that Tom got it right. “Go on..,” Tom prompts when Jack doesn’t immediately respond.

“He,” Jack scrubs at his beard with his knuckles. “He’s pregnant.”

“Huh,” Tom says. “Good for him, I guess? Or not?”

“No,” Jack says, waving his deli box, “like,  _ pregnant _ pregnant.”

“Oh,” Tom says. He raises his eyebrows, finally making the connection. “ _ Ohhhhh _ . Like, you…” He gestures at Jack. “You?”

“Yeah,” Jack says flatly. “Me.”

Tom’s eyes go wide. “Holy shit.”

Jack pushes on. “So there’s this thing where they tell you what fruit it is every week, like the size, and this week it’s lemon.” Looking at it through Tom’s eyes, it seems insane. It’s basically the worst thing that can happen, and here’s Jack taking a selfie with a lemon. “Fifteen weeks,” he adds.

“I am so sorry” Tom hugs him, hard, with the arm that’s not holding his food. “That really sucks. Are you OK?”

“Yeah, well, it’s my own fault.” It’s nice for someone to feel sympathetic, Jack realizes. The only person he’s talked to about this is Harry, and he doesn’t deserve any sympathy from Harry. “Nothing I can do about it now.”

Tom steps to the side to let someone with a shopping cart through. “Is he... um… keeping...”

“Yeah.”

Tom makes a face. “Why?”

Jack feels strangely defensive. “He’s got his reasons.” He turns to walk toward the checkout.

Tom falls into step beside him. “Are you talking to him?”

“Well, yeah, of course I am.” 

“You like him,” Tom says suddenly.

“Shut up.” Jack slides his lunch toward the checker and inspects a tin of fair trade mints. It rattles when he shakes it.

“You liiiiiike him,” Tom croons. He bounces up and down on his toes. “You’re going to get married and have a baby and move to the suburbs.”

“Fuck off.” Jack slides his credit card, picks up his lunch, and waits at the end of the counter for Tom.

The momentary interruption of paying for his food doesn’t deter Tom. “You’re going to drive a minivan,” he says as soon as he rejoins Jack. “And get a golden retriever.”

“It’s not like that.” Jack was expecting pity or judgment, but Tom’s suburban fantasy is almost worse than either.

“When can you officially go dad bod? Is Harry going to be into that?”

The August heat hits them like a wall as the automatic doors slide open and the grocery store air conditioning dissipates in their wake. “Look, I knocked him up, he’s probably going to hate me forever.”

Tom stops and looks at him with a baffled expression. “Why would he do that?”

“I’d hate me,” Jack says. “This is kind of ruining his life.”

“Well, it’s not great for yours either.”

Jack shrugs and keeps walking.

“I mean, you’re kind of stuck together now, right?” Tom asks. “You might as well get laid.”


	4. Chapter 4

The next Monday starts with a string of avocado emojis from Harry. Jack is starting to be suspicious of the fruit scale’s accuracy.  _ is that really bigger than a lemon? _

_ questionable _ , Harry replies.  _ will ask my doc this week _

_ do you get another ultrasound?  _ The thought of Harry getting to see the baby is unsettling, like a snapchat of mutual friends hanging out without him.

_ no just 16wk checkup _ . Then, a minute later,  _ you can come if you want _

Jack sends back a question mark, which accurately reflects his mental state. What’s a 16wk checkup? Why’s Harry inviting him? What’s the right answer? Why is he already looking up his PTO balance to make sure he can take off work for this?

He immediately regrets his ambivalence when Harry responds  _ it’s not a big deal _

_ when is it? _ Jack types immediately, trying to send the message so fast it’ll look like he didn’t get Harry’s text first.

_ 415 thurs _

_ I’ll be there _

When Jack walks into the doctor’s office on Thursday, Harry’s emerging from a back hallway. “You done already?” Jack asks, surprised.

“Nope, just had to piss in a cup.” Harry leads him to a pair of seats in the waiting room. All the art on the walls is of rounded shapes and vessels.

“Drug test?”

Harry’s laugh is the unselfconscious cackle that Jack is starting to angle for. “Maybe. I don’t really know why. They make you do it every checkup.”

“Huh,” Jack says. Nothing about pregnancy makes any sense.

“Actually…” Harry has an awkward expression on his face. “It must not be a drug test. There probably would have been weed in there, at least the first time.” He rubs his palms on his thighs. “Since I didn’t know…”

“It’s probably fine,” Jack says. “They would have busted you by now.”

“Oh, I told my doctor about it.” Harry kicks his feet out in front of him and leans back in his chair. “He said it’s probably not a problem. It’s not like I was smoking all the time…”

“You told him about it?” Jack asks, incredulously. He’s lied his way through the alcohol and drug questions at every doctor’s appointment since high school. He can’t believe that honesty has no consequences.

Harry shrugs. “Yeah, he’s great. You’ll like him.”

The medical assistant calls Harry’s name. They follow her down the hallway behind the reception desk, stopping at a scale around the corner.

“Don’t look,” Harry demands.

“Like I care.” Jack rolls his eyes but obediently turns to face the opposite wall while Harry steps onto the scale. Harry makes a displeased noise at whatever the result is, and Jack follows him and the medical assistant into an exam room at the end of the hallway. She takes Harry’s blood pressure while Jack inspects the view of the city outside the window, and leaves them alone after telling them that the doctor will be with them in a minute.

“You work today?” Jack asks while they wait. Harry’s shorts and Harley Davidson t-shirt don’t exactly look like work attire.

“”No, summer session ended last week.”

“Nice,” Jack says. A job that tracks the school year wouldn’t be so bad. Harry looks tan. “So you’re off ’til September?” 

“Yup,” Harry says smugly, kicking his heels against the side of the exam table. “All I did today was sleep late and go swimming. Swimming’s so great right now. Feels good to be weightless.”

Jack hears a quick knock, and the door to the exam room opens. The doctor walks in, wearing blue scrubs and a stethoscope around his neck. “Good to see you again, Harry,” he says, with a smile that Jack doesn’t trust.

“You too,” Harry says, smiling back, which Jack dislikes even more. He points toward Jack’s chair. “This is Jack.”

“Glad you could join us, Jack,” the doctor says, shaking Jack’s hand. “I’m Dr. Winston.” He has a beard. Jack hates him already.

As Dr. Winston feels Harry’s belly, Jack alternates between silent resentment and telling himself what a horrible person he is. This is a  _ doctor _ . This is his  _ job _ . It is  _ weird  _ and _ inappropriate _ to resent him for touching more of Harry than Jack’s gotten to touch in, oh, sixteen weeks. With Harry’s shirt hiked up and the waistband of his shorts scrunched down, Jack can see a slight but definite curve to his belly. He’s not close enough to be able to tell whether Harry’s leafy tattoos still look the same, so he looks away, trying not to think about Dr. Winston’s hands there.

“Everything looks good.” The doctor picks up a piece of equipment from the counter by the exam table. “Ready for the heart rate?”

“Yes,” Harry says, emphatically. Jack leans forward, elbow on his knees.

Dr. Winston squirts some gel onto the device in his hand and runs it across Harry’s belly. A metallic noise fills the room, and then a rhythmic whooshing comes into focus through the static. It sounds like an underwater recording, or an alien making contact, steady and ominous. The noise seems too loud to be the tiny pulsing spot on the ultrasound monitor four weeks ago, too big to come from something avocado-sized.

“Right on target,” Dr. Winston says. He hands Harry a couple of tissues from a box on the counter, and puts the heartbeat device away as Harry wipes the gel off his belly. Then he extends a hand, which Harry uses to pull himself back up to a sitting position. Harry beams at him, possibly clasping the doctor’s hand longer than is strictly necessary, and Jack seethes. 

“Everything looks good,” the doctor tells him. “We’ll see you in another four weeks, and don’t forget to get your 20 week scan scheduled.”

“That’s it?” Jack looks up at him, surprised.

“That’s it,” Dr. Winston says, already halfway out the door. He turns and smiles at them with too many teeth. “That’s good, you want these to be short and uneventful.”

“Got it.” Jack never wants to see Dr. Winston again, even as he resolves to come to every single one of these appointments so he never has to leave Harry alone with Dr. Winston again.

Harry has to take his good veins down the hall for another blood draw before they leave. “Why do they need your blood again?”

“No idea.” Harry takes Jack’s hand while the phlebotomist ties a strap around his other arm. “Just vampires. Thanks for the clean bill of health, by the way.”

Jack glances over at the phlebotomist. She’s cross-referencing the label on the empty vial with Harry’s chart on the computer. “Oh, um, you too.” He reaches for the first topic he can think of to change the subject. “How did you start coming to Dr. Winston?”

“Julia recommended him,” Harry says. He winces as the needle slides in. “Isn’t he great?”

Jack searches for a diplomatic answer. “Hard to tell, it was so short.”

“He was really nice at my first appointment,” Harry says. “I was kind of a mess, and he just, like, explained everything. He’s kind of like a dad, right?”

“Um.” Dad vibes are not what Jack was getting from Dr. Winston. “You were a mess?”

“Well, yeah.” Harry lets go of Jack’s hand as the phlebotomist wraps a cotton ball in place over the needle mark. “I just found out. It was a lot.”

“Yeah,” Jack echoes. “A lot.” He can’t forget for a minute that no matter how fucked up this is for him, it’s probably a million times worse for Harry.

Blood draw over with, they walk out to the elevator. “Is it always that short?” Jack asks. 

“Yeah,” Harry says. “The ultrasound next time, that’s supposed to be longer.” He punches the elevator button and looks at Jack. “That’s when they tell you boy or girl,” he says. “If you want to know. I mean, if you come. You don’t have to. Or if you do they can just write it down for me if you don’t want to know...”

Jack’s trying to follow. Did he just get invited to the ultrasound? “Of course I’ll come,” Jack says. “Why wouldn’t I want to know?”

“Some people don’t,” Harry says. “People like a surprise, I guess.”

Jack laughs without meaning it. “I think we’ve had enough surprises.”

In the lobby, Harry tips the white-framed sunglasses perched in his hair down over his face. The pavement shimmers in the late afternoon heat outside the revolving door. It’s barely been any time since Jack got here. “Hey,” he says. “I know you can’t drink, but, happy hour food?”

“Sure,” Harry says, scraping a hand back through his hair. “Where to?”

For a few minutes, everything feels almost normal. Picking a bar. Finding a table. Ordering sliders and wings. It could almost be a first date, nothing but unknowns and potential, until Harry asks whether the kale Caesar has raw egg in it.

Jack looks at him incredulously. “Nobody’s supposed to actually order the kale Caesar. It’s just there for appearances.”

“Heyyyyy,” Harry says, and orders it anyway. Mildly offended is a good look on him. It comes with a dimple. Jack resolves to try for it more often.

“Why no raw egg?”

Harry rolls his eyes. “There’s a whole long list of stuff you’re not supposed to eat. Like, sushi and cold cuts and stuff.”

“That sucks.”

“Yeah, I miss sushi the most.” Harry picks up the coaster the server left for Jack’s beer and balances it between the tabletop and his hand, rolling it from side to side. “Do your friends know? Like, the ones from the bar?”

“Just Tom.” Jack taps his fingers on the side of his pint glass. “It’s… I don’t know.” It’s still hard to think about telling people. To know what they’re going to think of him.

“Yeah.” Harry blows out a breath. “I haven’t told everyone yet either.”

“Who have you…” Jack trails off, realizing that his reluctance to tell anyone has only been partly shame-based. It’s also been nice to have a secret with Harry.

“My family, obviously.” It’s not obvious to Jack; telling his family is among the things he’s dreading most. “My work knows.” Harry’s ticking groups of people off on his fingers as he lists them. “Zayn, my roommate, he figured it out, because of the puking. And then Zayn’s friend Louis, he’s got a kid, so I’ve talked to him about some stuff.”

“Like what?”

“Just stuff.” Harry shrugs. “He’s kind of… on the opposite side from me, like, Freddie’s usually with his mom.”

“They’re not together?”

“No,” Harry says, looking off to the side. “They get along, though. They weren’t ever… together, like that.”

“How often does Louis see him?” Jack asks. “His kid… Freddie, right?” He’s only partly asking about Louis.

“Like every other weekend, something like that.”

Jack makes a neutral noise. Every other weekend. That doesn’t seem like very often to see Harry. Or the kid, he reminds himself, to see the kid. “What’s he think about it?”

“About what?”

“Just… having a kid, all of it.”  _ How bad is it _ , Jack thinks,  _ is any part of me going to survive?  _ “He’s our age, right? Or, your age?”

“Yeah, pretty much.” Harry looks at Jack suspiciously. “Wait, how old are you?”

“Twenty seven.” Jack, who until recently had found twenty-seven to be an ideal age -- old enough to have some money, young enough to have very little he’s required to spend it on -- now feels strangely embarrassed about it. Twenty-seven seems too old to be going around impregnating random twenty-three-year-olds.

“Okay.” Jack can’t tell what Harry thinks about that. “So he’s kind of between us. Anyway, he says it’s great, just, like, watching him grow up.”

It’s not quite the reassurance Jack was looking for. “Do you believe him?”

Harry gives him a strange look. “Yeah, why wouldn’t I?”

Because it just doesn’t seem possible. Because it’s the complete destruction of how he expected his life to be. He shrugs, dodging the question. “Tom’s the only person I’ve told.”

“Not your folks?” Harry asks, surprised.

“No way.” Jack takes a long drink. “They’re going to be the hardest.”

“They’ll be mad at you?” Harry looks concerned.

“No, not like that, they’re just… I don’t know.” It’s not that he’s in the habit of making life choices just because his parents support them, but his life has undeniably proceeded in exactly the manner they might have hoped for. Two degrees, a job they can brag to their friends about, self-supporting since the week after college graduation. He’s never wrecked a car, never gotten in legal trouble, never had any credit card debt. The only way his credentials as a son could be improved upon would be living closer to home. Which gives him an idea. “I may wait to do it in person. Maybe Thanksgiving.”

“That’s ages away,” Harry says, his eyebrows going up. “Lucky you.” He pushes the flat of his hand into his stomach. “I’ve got to tell everyone like, next week, or else it’s just going to be obvious.” He’s still fiddling with the coaster, rubbing a finger over the edge to shred its layers open. “It’s just… hard.”

“Yeah,” Jack agrees. It’s always hard to admit you’ve fucked up. And this one, this ultimate fuck-up, he’s going to have to admit it again and again, to everyone, for years to come. Jack’s in no hurry to get started.

***

At happy hour a couple of weeks later, he tells himself he’ll spill it all as soon as he finishes his next beer. But just as he drains the last of it, Aneurin says, “So I’ve got to bail on golf Saturday. Lucy’s parents are in town.”

“Shit, is that this weekend?” Tom asks, thumbing through his calendar. “I’m doublebooked. I can’t do it either.”

“Fuck all of you.” Barry finishes his pint. “Jack, you’re still in, right?”

“Yeah, I’m in.” The charity golf tournament has been about the last thing on his mind, but their company’s a major supporter, and all of the higher-ups in Jack’s department are playing. He can’t back out, even if their foursome is collapsing.

“Do us proud, Jack.” Tom sets his phone back down on the table. “And Barry, try not to be too embarrassing for one afternoon.”

“Can’t promise anything,” Barry says cheerfully. “We should get a foursome together, though, it’s not like we can get a refund. And it’s a nice fucking course.”

Everyone looks at Fionn. Fionn crosses his arms. “Don’t even think about it.”

“Hey, I can see if Harry wants to play,” Jack says, pulling out his phone. “Let me text him.”

“That guy you hooked up with?” Barry reaches for the pitcher and fills Jack’s glass. “Are you dating him now or something.”

“No,” Jack says, distractedly, as he types. Tom kicks him under the table. Jack ignores him. All of his bandwidth is dedicated to this perfect excuse to spend the afternoon with Harry. Maybe they can go out afterwards. Telling everyone that Harry’s pregnant -- and answering their questions, and enduring their reactions -- is a distant second priority to sending this text. He types and retypes a consciously informal message asking Harry if he wants to play Saturday at the country club where the tournament’s held.  _ it’s this charity thing for work _ , he adds,  _ half our foursome just bailed _ . After another moment’s thought, he finishes with a third message:  _ it’s paid for _ .

Jack sets his phone on the table, face up, and takes a deep breath. “So…” he starts. His phone buzzes and an alert pops up.

_ sure _ , it says. Jack opens it up. Harry’s still typing.  _ still need a 4th? could ask niall _

_ go for it _ , Jack texts. “Harry’s in,” he tells Barry. “He might have a friend too.”

“Great,” Barry says. “Maybe I can trip his friend and get laid.”

“Sure, maybe, if you give him a concussion,” Jack says, just as his phone buzzes.

He checks the message:  _ we’re in, what time? _

“Done,” Jack announces. “Got four.” He considers telling everyone that actually, technically, there’ll be five of them, but he’s high on the prospect of a golf afternoon with Harry, and more of Barry’s hookup jokes would only ruin his good mood. He’ll tell him on Saturday, he promises himself, maybe in the car on the way over.

***

He doesn’t. It’s a gorgeous bright blue September day as he and Barry wind their way up the long and rolling drive to the clubhouse, passing tidy greens on either side. The maples at the edge of the course are just starting to turn golden at their tops. It’s a good day to be alive, a good day to spend with Harry, doing something normal that Jack is perfectly competent at. No doctors, no small children, just hitting the fucking links. He can always tell Barry later. Or maybe it’ll just come up today, no big deal.

As they unload their clubs in the parking lot, another car pulls in a few spots down. Jack recognizes Harry getting out of the passenger seat. He still doesn’t look that pregnant. If Jack didn’t know, he’d probably just think Harry had bad posture so his belly sticks out a little. Harry turns to the back of the car to get his clubs, and from behind, in golf pants, he definitely doesn’t look pregnant. Jack wants to fit himself against him, tuck his chin over Harry’s shoulder, flatten a palm over his belly, make him stand up straight.

Jack shoulders his bag and points toward Harry and Niall. “There they are.” He starts in their direction.

“No fucking way,” Barry mutters, falling into step beside him.

“Wha…” Jack starts, but Barry’s already two strides ahead of him.

“Hey,” Barry calls, as Jack picks up his pace, “hey, you’re Niall, right?”

Beside the trunk of his car, Niall turns their way. “Yeah?”

“What?” Jack asks, stopping beside Barry.

“He plays at the pub every week,” Barry says to Jack. And then, to Niall, “You’re really good.”

By the time Jack realizes Barry’s talking about the disreputable Irish pub in his neighborhood, the one Jack and Tom have always made excuses to avoid whenever possible, Barry’s shaking Niall’s hand and introducing himself. Niall looks at Barry quizzically. “Are you on that team that always wins trivia?”

“That’s me,” Barry says smugly. He cuts off Jack’s question before he can ask. “It’s only because I make Fionn come to trivia night.”

Harry starts to pull his golf bag out of the back of the car and Jack steps around Niall, leaving him to pub gossip with Barry. He puts a hand on Harry’s clubs. “Should I get that?”

Harry glances over his shoulder at Niall. “Don’t worry about it.” He picks up his bag, knocking Jack’s hand off. “It’s not that heavy.”

Jack steps back, embarrassed. Carrying heavy things seems like the most basic level of support he ought to be providing. If he’s not supposed to be carrying shit for Harry, he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s supposed to be doing here. “I think registration’s that way.” He points a thumb over his shoulder, just to have something to do with his hand.

Harry joins Jack as he turns toward the clubhouse. Barry and Niall follow behind them, still sorting through all of their connections. “You ever go to the pub with Niall?” Jack asks, rethinking every time he’s ever convinced the rest of their group to go someplace cleaner, or better-smelling, or with an actual menu instead of a display of individual bags of Fritos. He wonders how close he’s come to meeting Harry before.

“Nah,” Harry says. “He’s got this whole crowd of Irish friends, it’s kind of their thing.”

“Actual Irish, or like Barry?” Jack asks. Barry’s Irish like Jack is Scottish, almost spiritual attachments to cultures with which they have very little direct connection.

Harry laughs. “More like Barry.”

They pass a series of German and Italian cars as they make their way up the country club parking lot. “What’s your background?”

“Mongrel?” Harry says, grinning in a way that makes Jack wonder what nationality’s bloodlines evolved dimples. “I don’t really know.”

“Hybrid vigor, right?” Jack wonders about the collision of their genes, what it’s going to be like. He hopes the baby gets some of Harry’s serenity about all of this, the way he’s picked himself up and gotten on with being pregnant the same way he picked himself up off the bar floor that first night. Maybe the dimple, too.

“Could be English, somewhere back on my mom’s side,” Harry adds. “Nobody in my family’s really into genealogy.”

“So I can tell the baby he’s Scottish and you won’t argue?”

“She,” Harry says automatically. “I’ll argue about that part.” He bumps the back of Jack’s leg with his golf bag. “Hey, do you think she’ll have red hair?”

“God, I hope not.” Boy or girl, the baby deserves Harry’s looks, at least.

Ahead of them at the check-in tent, Jack spots a group from his department. As they finish up and head toward the first tee, Ken and James nod at Jack as they pass his group in line. Cillian, who’s wearing the same corporate golf polo Jack is, gives him a fist bump on his way by. “Nice shirt.”

Tom stops, surveying Jack’s group. “Didn’t bring Glynn-Carney today?”

“Couldn’t make it,” Jack says. “You might be the only Tom out there.”

“Well, tell him I said what’s up.” The corporate logo tag on Tom’s golf bag glints in the sun as Tom shifts the bag on his shoulder.

“Will do.” Jack tips him a salute, and resists the impulse to send a text immediately.

Tom and Tom were in the same Six Sigma certificate program a year ago. Tom Glynn-Carney had told Jack he kept zoning out during group discussions because he couldn’t stop staring at Tom Hardy’s mouth. “There should be a law that he has to, like, wear a mask or something,” Tom had said.

Jack agrees with the sentiment as he introduces Harry and Niall. The streaks of ink below the sleeves of Tom’s golf shirt echo Harry’s tattoo-splotched arm when they shake hands. Jack’s arms feel suddenly bare. And also kind of small. “You know Barry, right?” Jack says hurriedly, before he can convince himself that Harry’s shaking Tom’s hand for any longer than necessary.

“Have a good round, man.” Barry fist-bumps Tom and Jack turns to the check-in table with relief as Tom heads toward the first tee.

The day rights itself after their tee time. The impossibly blue sky gives clean edges to every bunker and water hazard, and their strokes slice and crack through the fall air with unusual crispness. Jack strides down the fairways with Harry by his side, feeling for a moment like he’s got everything handled.

At every tee box, he tries to be inconspicuous as he watches Harry. His swing’s off-balance and erratic, with his elbows in the wrong places and the ball never landing where Harry expects it to. He overdramatically throws his driver to the ground after a disappointing tee shot on the tenth hole, but his frustration seems real. As they walk down the fairway together, Jack finally asks, “Is being pregnant messing with your swing?

“ _ Yes _ .” Harry stops short. “God, that’s it. I should have known.”

Barry and Niall are ahead of them, at the top of the rise to the green. Jack squints. It looks like they’re play boxing. “What’s it feel like?”

Harry makes a frustrated noise. “It’s like I don’t even know what my body’s doing any more. I hate it.”

“Makes sense,” Jack says. “There’s basically another person inside you, trying to fuck you up.”

“I guess.” Harry grimaces. “It sounds weird to be like, oh, I was always so in touch with my body. But I guess I was, and now it does all this shit I can’t control.”

Jack thinks back to the Harry he hasn’t seen since the night they met, the one who pasted himself to Jack’s side and trailed his fingers along the seam of his jeans and poked his nose into Jack’s neck all before they even left the bar. He wonders if the disappearance of that Harry has anything to do with the distance Harry feels from his own body, and then dismisses the thought. The simplest answer’s usually the right one. Harry’s probably just not interested in touching Jack any more.

Harry hooks his tee shot hard on hole 14, and Jack makes it to the green while Harry’s still hunting for his ball in the rough. When Jack arrives, Barry’s focusing his phone on Niall as Niall sinks his putt and exaggeratedly tosses his putter to the side.

“What’s your insta?” Barry asks, thumbing at his phone. “I’ll tag you in that one.”

Niall pulls his phone out of his pocket and walks over to Barry. “I should have tagged you in that last one. Let me add you.” They confer, heads bent over their phones, and then Niall slings his arm around Barry and takes a selfie.

Jack blinks. This is… unexpected.

“We should go to the pub after,” Barry says, and Niall enthusiastically agrees.

Jack hates to object, when Barry’s doing such a nice job of setting up the rest of Jack’s Saturday, but the pub’s an even worse idea than it usually is. “Let’s go someplace Harry can get food, at least,” he objects. “The pub kind of sucks if you’re not drinking.”

Barry looks at Jack like he’s an unwelcome intruder. “What do you mean, Harry doesn’t drink? He was pretty fucking sloppy last time I saw him.”

“He’s pregnant,” Jack says. He braces himself for whatever inappropriate joke Barry’s about to come up with, and then realizes that it wasn’t so hard to say. Felt kind of good, actually. The sun is shining and Harry looks fucking good in golf pants and he’s having Jack’s baby. This is a great fucking day.

“Holy shit! You’re pregnant?” Barry directs the last bit over Jack’s shoulder. Jack looks around to see Harry coming up on the green. There’s a look of horror on his face.

“You’re  _ pregnant _ ?” Niall says. Jack whips his head back toward Niall, who’s looking daggers at Harry. The autumn sun suddenly feels white-hot, burning the back of Jack’s neck. 

“Yeah, I am,” Harry says slowly. He props his bag at the edge of the green and walks toward them, stopping halfway between Jack and Niall. “I should have told you before.”

“Like,  _ how _ pregnant?” Niall asks.

“Sweet potato,” Harry and Jack say simultaneously. Harry grins at him, teeth bright in the sunshine.

The momentary thrill of their united front evaporates when Niall looks at Jack with narrowed eyes. “How come he knows so much about this?”

“He’s the father,” Harry says. “Um. The other father.”

“What, are you guys  _ together _ now?” Niall says, like he can’t believe it.

“No, no, we’re not,” Harry answers quickly.

Even if it’s the correct answer, it’s still no fun to hear. The effervescent feeling from telling Barry about the baby is gone, and Jack remembers how fucked up this entire situation is. He barely knows Harry, and Harry’s got an entire web of friendships that obviously have some weird complications to them, and maybe he’s never going to really know Harry, maybe that’s not even possible. A couple of minutes ago everything felt right with the world. How stupid of him.

“You’ve really got a knack for not telling me things,” Niall says bitingly. Harry’s got a hand on his shoulder, walking him toward the edge of the green. Jack turns in the opposite direction, but not before he hears Niall spit, “At what point were you planning to tell me that I’m playing 18 fucking holes with your  _ unborn child _ and your, your, whatever he is?” 

“Fuckin’ A,” Barry punches Jack in the arm as he follows him to the opposite side of the green. Whatever Harry’s saying to Niall, Jack’s got no interest in hearing it. “The boys can swim, huh?” 

Jack leans on his putter, remembering why he’d held off on giving Barry the news. Across the green, Niall’s talking at Harry, too low for Jack to hear. Harry’s shoulders are hunched, and he looks more definitively pregnant. As if he’s been sucking his stomach in all day and now there’s no more point. As Jack watches, Harry runs his fingertips over his belly, one of the unconscious gestures he uses whenever he’s talking about the baby.

Harry straightens up. Jack doesn’t have to be a lip reader to recognize “I’m sorry.” Harry shrugs at Niall and turns to retrieve his putter from his golf bag. After a moment, Niall follows him back onto the green. “Whose putt?” Harry asks, overly affable.

“Mine,” Jack raises his putter in a weak salute. The ball misses the hole by several feet. He hasn’t blown a putt so badly since junior golf.

His accuracy doesn’t improve from there, and neither does the awkwardness. As soon as the last putt sinks on the eighteenth hole, Niall yanks his bag onto his shoulder and strides off toward the parking lot.

“See you Wednesday,” Barry calls after him, and Niall waves a hand over his shoulder.

“Sorry,” Jack says to Harry, who’s already following Niall. “Talk later?”

“Yeah, I’ll call you.” Harry says, and Harry barely glances back at him, but Jack can tell it’s a lie.

He pulls out his phone as soon as he gets in the car, ignoring Barry.

“What are you doing?” Barry asks.

“Group chat before you tell everyone,” Jack says, not looking at Barry, preoccupied with composing a careful  _ hey sorry i didn’t tell you guys sooner but... _ .

He doesn’t get any further before a message from Barry pops up in the chat: _JACK KNOCKED UP HARRY_ , followed by a string of eggplants, water droplets, and baby emojis. “Too late,” Barry announces triumphantly. 

“You asshole,” Jack says, but without any bite. At least it’s done now.

“Least I could do,” Barry says. “Thanks for the cockblock.”

“Excuse me?” Jack asks, incredulously. If anybody’s been cockblocked here, it’s Jack.

“I’ve been trying to get that guy to say more than two words to me for months and you just randomly bring him along to golf like it’s fate or something...”

“...Niall?” Jack asks, bewildered.

“Fucking cute, right?” Barry drums his hands on the dashboard.

“Not my type.” Harry doesn’t need Niall getting mad at him for being pregnant, as if this isn’t hard enough for Harry. Whatever’s going on, that’s a dick move. Niall’s the furthest thing from cute, as far as Jack’s concerned.

Barry snorts. “Yeah, sorry he’s not tall, dark, and pregnant.”

“Hey!” Jack flushes at the realization of how transparent he must be.

Barry ignores him. “So I get it all set up where we’re going out after the round like a fuckin’ double date, not that you thanked me for it, and you go and blow it up.”

“Look, I didn’t know Harry hadn’t told him.”

“Why would he know?” Barry asks, and Jack hates to admit it’s a very reasonable question. “It’s not like you told me.” 

“Sorry.” Jack doesn’t have a good answer.  _ Because Harry’s the only one who actually has to tell people.  _ “I just…”  _ have a hard time telling people how epically I’ve fucked up _ , he doesn’t say. He changes the subject instead, gesturing down the row to Niall’s car. He and Harry are no closer to driving away than Jack and Barry are. “You really want to wade in to all that?”

“Oh, like you’re such a role model here?” Barry buckles his seatbelt. “At least I’m not gonna get anybody pregnant.”

Jack’s phone buzzes and he glances back down at it. It’s a message from Fionn:  _ are congratulations in order? _

_ I don’t even know _ , Jack replies.

***

“So you accidentally set Barry up?” Tom’s scanning the menu on the outside of the food truck at lunch on Monday while Jack tells him about the weekend’s events. “You basically went on a double date with Barry? By accident?”

“You could say that.” Harry’s text saying  _ mango  _ came in right on schedule this morning, which makes it easier to laugh about the golf disaster. “Worst double date in history.” He’s got to take it down a notch, to be cool. Harry’s obviously got other shit going on and Jack seems to keep doing the wrong thing.

There’s a piece of paper taped to the counter advertising a fish taco special. It comes with mango salsa. Jack orders it. As he accepts his paper plate through the window, a spot at the picnic table on the corner plaza comes open. Jack claims it while Tom’s still at the salsa bar.

He tries to surreptitiously take a picture of his lunch before Tom notices, but it’s hard to get the right angle with the fall sunshine blocking half the taco in the sharp shadow of his phone. He comes at it it from the other side, and then lowers his phone so the lens is almost level with the plate. 

Tom sits down while Jack’s still experimenting. “When did you become a food blogger?”

“It’s mango week.” Jack scrolls through filter options. None of them improve the photo. 

“Mango week?”

“Like, mango-sized. The baby.”

Tom flexes his hand like he’s holding a mango in it. “That’s not so big. When’s it due again?”

“February 4.”

“That’s so cute,” Tom says, through a mouthful of taco. “You’re, like, into this.”

“I don’t know.” Jack gives up on a decent photo and captions his best effort  _ mango salsa _ before sending it to Harry. “It is what it is, right?”

His phone buzzes hollowly against the picnic table as soon as Jack puts it down.  _ how could you treat our mango child this way _

Jack folds over the taco, takes a bite, and snaps a photo of the remainder.  _ he’s delicious _ , he adds, typing with one finger, mango chunks dripping out of the taco in his other hand.

The reply is almost instantaneous:  _ you mean she _

_ he _

_ she _

Jack puts his taco down and wipes the juice off his hand so he can type, as quickly as possible,  _ i cant hear you over my delicious male taco _ .

“That Harry?” Tom’s watching him.

“Yeah.” Jack’s tortilla slowly unfolds itself on the plate. He puts his phone down. “Sorry.”

The phone buzzes. Jack’s eyes cut toward it.

“Go on,” Tom says, a friendly challenge in his voice.

Jack holds out for a second, scraping his hand over his beard.

“You know you want to.”

“Fine.” He turns the phone face up.

_ answers next week _

_? _

_ Ultrasound _

_ when? _

_ you coming? _

_ that ok? _

_ 9/20 @ 345 same place as last time _

Jack relaxes. “We find out boy or girl next week.” He refolds his taco and crams a bite into his mouth, trying to catch up with Tom.

“It’s a we now?”

Jack shrugs, glad his mouth’s full of taco. He doesn’t have an answer, anyway.

***

“So,” Jack says, as Harry sits down next to him in the waiting room. “Sorry about golf.”

It’s barely been two weeks, but Harry looks suddenly and unmistakably pregnant. His t-shirt’s stretched tight over his belly, making two small worn holes stand out.

“Don’t worry about it.” Harry scootches down in his waiting room chair and leans his head back against the wall. “He had to find out sometime. It wasn’t going to be pretty no matter what.” He spreads both hands over his belly. The baby’s banana-sized this week, a revelation which seemed to delight Harry more than the usual fruit.

“Can I ask…” Jack trails off.

Harry groans and rubs his eyes. “We hooked up a couple of times last year” -- Jack grinds his teeth, but quietly, so Harry won’t see -- “and I didn’t… I could have been smarter about it.”

“He thought it was more?” Jack guesses. It’s better than the other guesses he’s been torturing himself with since the golf tournament. (Niall’s Harry’s ex? Niall’s pregnant too? Niall and Harry are the heads of an international crime syndicate whose operations will be compromised if Harry takes paternity leave?)

“Right. I didn’t realize… or I didn’t want to realize, I guess, it was easier to just be like, ‘oh, we’re all having fun here, right.’” Harry waves his hands carelessly.

“...right,” Jack echoes. He remembers Harry silhouetted against his blinds, tying up his bandana, then the sound of his apartment door closing. We’re all having fun here.

“It’s kind of been weird ever since.” Harry rakes his hand back through his hair and replaces his sunglasses. “I haven’t, like… brought anyone around since then, so this” -- Harry gestures at his belly -- “it’s sort of like, well, now it’s obvious it’s not him and me.”

“So I was basically the worst possible person to break the news?”

“Actually…” Harry quirks his mouth to the side. “It wasn’t the worst. If you weren’t there Niall probably would’ve started getting ideas about adopting the baby, trying to make an honest man of me.” The ultrasound tech calls Harry’s name before Harry notices that Jack’s not laughing.

The scan takes longer this time. The technician draws all sorts of lines and arrows on the screen, tagging kidneys and measuring bones and showing them the umbilical cord. Everything that’s recognizable to Jack looks like it’s in order, all fingers and toes accounted for and the heart still pumping away.

“That’s the femur,” the tech tells them, connecting two points as she clicks through the measurements. Once she explains, Jack can tell that the view’s of both legs. And he’s pretty sure he can tell what’s between them.

He points at the screen. “Hey, is that…”

Harry slaps his hand down. “It is  _ not _ .”

“He’s right,” the technician says. She adds an arrow to the image and types B O Y.

Jack pumps his fist. His kid’s got big balls. That’s got to be a good sign.

Harry sighs. “He’s going to wear all the pink he wants.”

“Well, sure,” Jack says.

Harry looks surprised. “...you don’t mind?”

“Why would I mind? Dress him however you want.” After a moment’s reflection, Jack adds, “As long as you’re cool with me getting him a kilt. And a Broncos jersey.”

“He’ll have to wear his Packers jersey every other Sunday.” Harry crumples up the paper drape and wipes off his belly.

“Deal.”

“When does he wear the kilt?”

“Special occasions,” Jack says, with great dignity. “Weddings... funerals… beer pong...”

“Do you have one?”

“I do.”

Harry tilts his head, considering. “I bet you look good in a kilt.”

“I look awesome.” There are few things in life that Jack knows with great certainty, but this is one of them. He’s had his kilt since high school, when a distant cousin’s wedding prompted his family’s one big trip to the ancestral homeland. At the time, he’d given the kilt full credit for the unexpected blowjob he got in the storage closet at the reception hall. By the time he realized the kilt probably wasn’t responsible, since every other guy at the wedding was wearing a kilt too, he’d worn it to prom and two fraternity formals, and the kilt had established a perfect streak of getting him laid that still remains unbroken. He tries to use its power responsibly.

“I’d like to see that sometime.” Harry swings his legs over the side of the table, smiling crookedly at Jack.

***

“What was the girl name going to be?” Jack asks at happy hour after the ultrasound. It isn’t really what Jack wants to know, but asking about a now-hypothetical girl is safer than asking Harry what he plans on naming Jack’s son. 

“Same as the boy, probably,” Harry says, swabbing a wing deep into the cup of blue cheese dressing. “I like names that work both ways.”

“Like what?”

Harry leans over to his bag and retrieves a battered leather journal. Crooked ballpoint stars dot the cover, in between scrawled words and phrases. A patch of masking tape pins a bottle cap to the leather. The whole thing looks like a piece of Harry, as if he’s casually reached into his abdomen and pulled out his liver for Jack’s inspection.

Harry unwinds the strap around the journal and leafs through the pages until he gets to a bookmark of some sort. He turns the opened pages toward Jack and slides them across the table. Jack puts one hand flat across the spine and pulls the journal in front of him, resisting the urge to grab it with both hands and parse it from front to back like it’s a Rosetta Stone for deciphering Harry.

A printout from the first ultrasound is taped to one of the open pages. The baby’s an indistinct blob compared to what they’d seen on the screen today, but Jack recognizes the small spot, blurrier than the rest of the picture, where the baby’s heart is beating. Jack’s eyes catch on a small pointy heart scrawled in the margin. He runs his thumb down the list below the photo. Blake. Marley. Corey. Elliott. Alex. Cameron. Charlie. Quinn. 

“Anything you like?” Harry asks.

“Alex is okay, I guess,” Jack says, looking back down at the page. One of these names is going to stick, and he’ll be saying it for the rest of his life. He tests a few of them in his mind.  _ Meet my son, Blake. I’m taking Elliott to the batting cages this weekend. Cameron just passed his drivers’ test. _ It seems like a lot to ask of a name.

“Got any other ideas?” 

“I don’t know.” Jack hasn’t thought at all about what he’d name the baby. It’s Harry’s choice. But he’s asking. “I guess I’d like something that sounds Scottish, if he’s going to have your last name. He is, right?”

“Yeah.” Harry’s mouth scrunches to one side as he chews on the inside of his cheek. “Is that alright with you?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” Harry’s doing all the work. Harry’s the one drawing hearts in his journal like a middle schooler with a crush. The baby’s more Harry’s than he’ll ever be Jack’s. “Yours is cooler anyway.”

Harry nods. “Lowden could work as a first name.”

Jack considers it. Lowden Styles. It sounds good together, but it sounds like two last names. Or a hyphenated name. From some alternate reality, where there’s some reason to hyphenate their names. Or in some distant and barely imaginable future. Jack doesn’t want to rule out the option. “I’d rather it for a middle name, I think, if you’re asking.”

“Okay,” Harry says. “Something Lowden Styles. We’re two-thirds of the way there.”

***

“To Jack’s son,” Tom announces, raising his pint glass. Everyone else follows suit. Jack hasn’t talked to the guys very much about the whole baby thing. Tom’s had sympathy when he’s needed it, and Barry’s had all the inappropriate jokes he hasn’t needed, and other than that, nobody really knows what to say. They’re all united in their enthusiasm about the “it’s a boy” news, though.

Barry claps Jack on the back. “What are you going to name him?”

“Don’t know yet. Something Lowden Styles.”

“So it’s for sure yours?” Fionn asks. 

Jack realizes he hasn’t thought about this issue in… a while? a few weeks? (since pear? avocado?) “The timing works out...” he says.

“Yeah, but you only saw him that one night, right?” Barry says, on the scent now. “Guy like that, could have gotten laid every night that week.”

“Aren’t there ways to find out?” Fionn asks. He’s already got his phone up, googling.

“Careful what you search, bro, you’re gonna get targeted ads like you’re some player,” Barry cackles.

“Too late,” Fionn says, scrolling. “Hey, they can do a blood test, like now, or you can take a saliva sample from the baby…”

Jack cuts him off. “I’m not going to make Harry take a blood test.”

“Yeah, easier to just do the saliva thing,” Barry says. “You could be totally off the hook, right?”

“Sure,” Jack says. Something Lowden Styles. “Sure.”


	5. Chapter 5

Jack’s in an afternoon sales meeting, his phone sitting silent beside him on the conference table, when Harry’s number comes up. From the head of the table, Emma looks pointedly at the vibrating phone as it makes a teeth-grinding noise against the polished tabletop. “Sorry,” Jack mouths, sliding the phone into his lap. He glances down at it, confirming that it’s showing Harry’s name. It’s the first time he’s ever called Jack. It could be important, Jack justifies, it could be something to do with the baby. “I’ve gotta take this,” he mouths to Emma, pointing apologetically to his phone, and self-consciously ducks out the door.

He walks out of view of the conference room’s glass walls before answering with his usual brisk, business-y, “This is Jack,” not quite willing to believe it’s actually going to be Harry on the other end of the line.

It is, though. “Hey,” Harry says tiredly, and it’s obvious that something’s wrong.

“Hey,” -- Jack can feel his own voice going tender, and he’d be embarrassed about it if he wasn’t so worried -- “everything okay?”

“I don’t know,” Harry says, soft and strained. “There was a thing at work today, a kid escalated, and I got kicked in the stomach.” Harry’s voice quavers. “I haven’t felt anything since then, so.”

Jack’s chest tightens. “Have you called the doctor?”

“Yeah, somebody can see me before the end of the day. Not Dr. Winston, though.” Harry blows out a breath. “I’m headed that way.”

“That’s good.” Jack leans back against the hallway wall. He doesn’t know what else to say. At least Harry’s not seeing Dr. Winston. In Jack’s opinion, Dr. Winston was far too delighted with Harry whooping “pamplemousse!” repeatedly at his 24-week appointment. (Grapefruit was the fruit for week 23, but week 24 -- ear of corn -- didn’t sound as good in French.) “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, I guess we’ll see,” Harry says. He’s more composed now, his tone matter-of-fact. “Anyway, I just thought you should know.”

Jack blinks. That can’t be the reason Harry’s called. If this was just an FYI, he could have texted, like always. There’s something Harry needs from him, something he’s supposed to be saying, and Jack’s missed it. He has to have walked out of the team meeting for something more than a 30-second courtesy call. He can’t just slink back into the conference room and sit there wondering about whether something’s wrong with Harry. “I’ll meet you,” he says, making up his mind even as the words are coming out his mouth. “How long ‘til you get there?”

“I’m about to walk to the bus stop.” Harry doesn’t protest, not even for appearances’ sake, and Jack feels a warm rush of satisfaction at getting it right for once. “Hold on...” -- Harry’s voice gets faint as pulls the phone away from his ear -- “let me see when the next bus comes…”

“I’ll pick you up,” Jack says immediately, on a roll, doing the right thing. “Where are you at?” 

Harry gives him directions to the school, and Jack stops into his office just long enough to slide his laptop into his bag. He’s in the elevator before he thinks to tap out a quick email to Emma: “I’ll be out the rest of the day with a personal issue. Sorry to leave the meeting.” He reads the message back over, his attention snagging on the phrase “personal issue”. Just to try it out, he types over it with “family emergency.” The phrase feels weighty, but not dissonant. He says it out loud in the empty elevator, realizing with surprise that it’s accurate. Family emergency. His kid. His family.

Harry’s school is closer than Jack expects, tucked on a one-way street in a nice neighborhood on the other side of downtown. Harry’s waiting outside in the late October chill, trying in vain to zip his shearling-collared jacket over his belly. Jack leans over to wave at him through the passenger window. As he walks toward the car, his shoulders seem more hunched than usual. Jack fights the impulse to leap out of the driver’s seat and give him a hug. He looks like he needs one. Instead, he waits while Harry climbs awkwardly into the passenger seat and pulls out a long swath of seatbelt to stretch the buckle past his belly.

Raindrops start to hit the windshield as Jack drives in silence, sneaking sideways glances at Harry. Harry’s looking out the window with his brow furrowed, intermittently running his hands over his belly. “So what happened?” Jack finally asks.

Harry sighs, and scoots further down in the seat. “This kid I work with a lot, he was having a bad day.” Harry rakes a hand through his hair. “He was pretty escalated -- “

“What’s that mean?” Jack interrupts. It’s the same word Harry’d used on the phone.

“Loud,” Harry says. “Throwing things --” He pauses, and Jack waits. “He tipped over a couple of desks.”

“Okay.” It doesn’t actually sound okay, not at all.

“I was trying to get him out of the classroom, thought he was ready to walk with me.” Harry rubs at his stomach. “Guess I was wrong.”

“Does that... happen a lot?” Jack’s job has its share of frustrations, but nobody’s ever kicked him.

“Not... not a lot,” Harry says slowly, emphasizing the last word in a way that makes Jack wonder if he and Harry have different definitions for what “a lot” is. “And right now everybody else is kind of stepping in for me when they can. But it happens.”

“Jesus,” Jack says. “Seems like you shouldn’t have to do that, when you’re pregnant.”

“Kind of comes with the territory,” Harry says. “I’m usually pretty good about knowing when kids aren’t ready to have me in their space. I didn’t think it was going to be a thing today. He surprised me, is all. Gotta be more careful, I guess.” Then, more quietly, “If everything’s OK...”

“Don’t think like that,” Jack says automatically. “It’s going to be fine.” Harry goes silent. Jack turns into the parking garage at the medical complex and follows the path of wet tire tracks down to the bottom floor before he spies an open space. The garage is dimly lit and thoroughly depressing. As they wait for the elevator, Harry leans against the wall, arms crossed.

Jack rolls his shoulders back, trying to shake off the feeling that he ought to have an arm around Harry, or something. Something comforting, something other than Harry brooding over there alone. But Harry hasn’t voluntarily touched Jack since he grabbed his hand all the way back at the first ultrasound, so Jack’s got no reason to think that Harry would welcome a hug.

It’s the contrast that frustrates him. When Jack thinks back to that first night, to the version of Harry who eased his arm around Jack and pressed up against Jack’s side and traced his fingers along Jack’s thigh, it’s painfully obvious that Harry’s lost any interest he may have ever had in Jack. Harry must have been drunk, or desperate, or maybe Jack just got lucky. Whichever it is, he doesn’t seem to see Jack that way anymore, now that he’s gotten to know him. These days, Harry keeps his hands off.

The clinic’s backed up at the end of the day, the waiting room more busy than usual. Harry checks in and Jack finds two seats. They wait while the gray afternoon fades to early winter darkness out the window behind them. Jack watches the crowd, pregnant people of every size and color. A girl in Ugg boots and a baby doll dress, looking younger than Harry but accompanied by two toddlers fighting over a sliding bead toy in the corner. A pregnant woman in an abaya. Two men who look Samoan, both of them huge and impassive, impossible to tell which one of them is pregnant. A woman with a maternity suit and a briefcase, running in late for her appointment. He and Harry don’t look any stranger, or any better, than anyone else. Everyone gets through this, Jack realizes. They will, too. 

As the waiting room empties out, they’re finally called back. “You’re seeing Dr. Uchima today,” the medical assistant tells them. “She’ll be with you in just a minute.” She takes Harry’s blood pressure and then leaves them alone in the room.

Jack takes the single chair. Harry hops off of the exam table and paces restlessly around the room. He stops to look over a bulletin board full of birth announcements, aggressively pink and blue. “People have some wild baby names,” he observes. “What do you think about Kaylib, like with a K-A-Y? Oh, or here’s a good one: Hook.”

“Like, Captain Hook?” Harry’s looking at him with a completely straight face, and Jack’s not entirely sure he’s joking. “You’re kidding, right?”

The doctor walks in as Harry cracks up. She’s got bangs and pink-frosted hair, and she smiles warmly at Harry. Jack immediately likes her more than Dr. Winston, with his untrustworthy beard. In general, Jack doesn’t trust any beard besides his own.

“Hi, Harry, I’m Dr. Uchima.” She shakes his hand, clasping it in both of hers. Harry’s face lightens. “You’re in today because of an injury?”

“I got kicked,” Harry says, nodding.

Dr. Uchima looks back over her shoulder at Harry as she washes her hands. “How long ago did this happen?”

“Two, three hours. Early afternoon.” 

“Where did it get you?”

Harry puts his hand flat on the side of his belly, fingers pressed together. “Right here.” He lays back at Dr. Uchima’s direction, and she keeps asking questions as she feels for the baby. Harry confirms that he hasn’t had any cramping, or bleeding, or felt any movement this afternoon.

“Let’s check on the heartbeat,” she says, squirting a glob of ultrasonic gel onto the handpiece while Harry scoots down the table onto his back.

They hear it almost as soon as she comes into contact with Harry’s belly, the staticy metallic rhythm that still sounds harsh and foreign. Jack exhales, and realizes that what he’s feeling is relief. He wants this baby to be okay.

A tear trickles from the corner of Harry’s eye down toward his ear. Harry sniffs and wipes at it with the back of his hand, his fingers curled into claws. Harry cries a lot, Jack is starting to realize. He wonders whether that’s a pregnant thing -- hormones, or whatever -- or just a Harry thing. Either way, it always somehow feels like it’s Jack’s fault. And it kind of is, he realizes. None of this would be happening if he hadn’t…

“There’s no reason to think there’s anything wrong,” the doctor says. She offers Harry a hand to pull himself back to a sitting position. “No indicators of fetal distress.”

“Why isn’t he moving?” Harry asks, scrunching the exam table’s paper cover under his fingers. “How do you know he doesn’t have a broken leg or something?”

“You’re not going to feel movement all the time.” Dr. Uchima’s rolled her stool over to the computer, briskly typing something into Harry’s chart. “How long has it been since you’ve eaten?”

“Not since lunch.”

“Drink some orange juice when you get home,” she tells him, standing up and tucking the stool under the workstation. “The baby may be more active once your blood sugar’s up.” She pauses with her hand on the door. “Let us know if you have any cramping or bleeding. You’ll be in next week for your 26-week visit?”

“Yeah,” Harry confirms, and the doctor’s gone.

Harry follows Jack back through the waiting room and out to the elevators. He looks small and shaky, and Jack thinks again how unfair it is that he can’t just take him by the hand. “I’ll drive you home,” he says, instead, and Harry doesn’t protest.

They emerge from the garage into rush hour traffic, the raindrops on the windshield glowing red from the taillights in front of them. As they poke their way down the arterial closest to Harry’s apartment, Jack makes a quick right into a gas station and parks outside the attached convenience store.

Harry picks up his head from where it’s resting against the window. “What are you stopping for?”

“I’m getting you some orange juice,” Jack says. “And I don’t know, maybe they’ve got a frozen pizza or whatever. You need to eat.”

Harry wrinkles his nose. “Let’s just order pizza.”

“I’m still getting juice, though,” Jack says, getting out of the car. “Be right back.”

Inside the store, he finds a bottle of orange juice in the cooler and shakes it up while he waits to pay, trying to remember if he’s ever bought orange juice without vodka. Out the window, he can see that Harry’s got his seat tipped back in the car, a hand on his forehead.

“Drink up.” Jack hands the bottle to Harry as he slides back into the drivers’s seat, and Harry obediently pops his seat back up and takes a long drink. Jack watches his profile, his throat working, in the sterile gas station light. “Thanks,” Harry says, recapping the bottle. “Hope that’ll work.”

Outside Harry’s place, Jack parks beside the garbage bins. Harry trudges slowly up to the third floor in a dully carpeted stairwell that smells like somebody’s dinner. When he unlocks the apartment door, Jack’s relieved to see that it’s dark inside, no evidence that Zayn’s home.

Harry hits the light switch and tosses his jacket over the back of a chair. “I’m going to put on sweatpants,” he says decisively, disappearing back toward the bedrooms. “And then we’re going to watch a rom com.”

“Are you serious?” Jack inspects the bookshelf while Harry’s out of sight. It’s a strange mix of graphic novels, self-help books, poetry, and a rainbow-striped book titled Love Is All You Need. The thick pink spine of What To Expect When You’re Expecting dominates one shelf. The collection couldn’t look more different from Jack’s bookshelf, which holds a predictable lineup of Freakonomics and Moneyball and The Art of War and a lot of Cormac McCarthy.

An empty aquarium with rocks and plant debris spread along the bottom sits on a end table next to the bookshelf, in front of the window. There’s a small assemblage of potted cacti on the windowsill behind it. Jack looks closer at the aquarium and finally spots the lizard curled up behind the biggest rock.

Harry pads back into the room, now in gray sweatpants. “Completely serious.” Traces of ink peek over the stretched-out neck of his white t-shirt. Jack wants to run his fingertips over them, his teeth, his tongue. “I’m safe there, I know what’s happening.”

Harry lights two garishly red candles in glass jars and tosses the lighter onto the coffee table between them, where it lands next to a half-solved Rubik’s Cube. Jack smells cinnamon as the candles heat up. Harry sinks heavily into the plaid couch and pulls a tasseled throw pillow with an ornately embroidered tiger on it out of the corner. He tucks it behind his head, and looks up at Jack with a self-consciously pitiful sigh.

Jack sits at the other end of the couch and thumbs open his phone. “What’s your pizza place around here?”

Harry doesn’t reply. When Jack looks over at him, he’s smiling down at his belly. “Hey,” he says warmly. “There you are.” He spreads his fingers out and tips his head back against the couch with a sigh of relief.

“Moving?” Jack watches the spot where Harry’s hand is resting.

“Yeah, just kicked me.” Harry picks his head up and looks at Jack. “Want to feel it?”

“Can I?” Feeling like he’s being let in on a secret, Jack abandons his phone on the arm of the couch. He scoots closer, awkwardly hovering his hand over Harry’s belly. “Where?”

Harry points to the right spot. Jack settles his hand there. Warmth bleeds up through the thin layer of Harry’s t-shirt. He’d sort of expected Harry’s belly to feel hard -- like, protective -- but it’s soft, some give there as Jack’s hand rises and falls with Harry’s breathing.

Nothing happens. Jack waits, his eyes trained on his hand. He’s lost all perspective; right now this feels like the most intimate way he’s ever touched anybody. The baby’s put up a mysterious force field around Harry, and now the baby’s the only reason he’s been let inside, and it’s not even cooperating. After a long and uncomfortable silence, Jack asks, “Should I…,” and starts to lift his hand away.

“No, it’s fine.” Harry puts a hand on top of Jack’s, pinning it in place against his belly. “Nobody ever touches me anymore.”

Jack’s face flushes. “What?” This is his fault somehow. Something is his fault and he’s not even sure what. And it doesn’t even make any sense. Why wouldn’t anybody be touching Harry, when it’s all Jack wants to do.

“Like, I used to be all over my friends, but now it feels like they’re weirded out.” Harry lifts his hand off of Jack’s and waves it down his torso. He looks away, toward the arm of the couch. “And it’s not like anybody else...” His voice quivers and fades. He inhales sharply under Jack’s hand and rubs at one eye with the back of his hand.

“Hey,” Jack says, because he’s had enough Harry tears for the day, and this time they’re definitely, definitely his fault, “hey, c’mere.” He wraps his arm around Harry, keeping his other hand in place on Harry’s belly. Out of everything that he’s screwed up so far, this feels like the worst. He’s been trying so hard to respect Harry’s distance, read his signals, and all he’s done is made Harry miserable because nobody’s touching him.

He pulls Harry as close as he can with one arm, and Harry buries his hot face against Jack’s shoulder. His weird, awkward shape still feels like it fits just right against Jack’s side. While Harry sniffles into his shoulder and takes a few jerky breaths, Jack lets himself get accustomed to Harry’s warm weight against him, to Harry’s bony knees digging into the side of his leg, to the curve of his bicep under Jack’s hand. He’s been restraining himself from this all evening, and suddenly it’s allowed.

The imminent threat of tears seems to have passed, but Harry hasn’t moved. Jack cautiously tips his chin down and to the side and presses his lips to the top of Harry’s head. He keeps them there, tensed halfway through a kiss he’s scared to release, and breathes in the faint vanilla scent from Harry’s disarray of hair.  _ I’m sorry _ , Jack thinks,  _ I’m sorry for doing this to you, I’m sorry for never getting any of this right _ .

Harry starts to lift his head and Jack braces himself for a rebuff. “Sorry…” Jack starts to say, but the word dissolves into garbled surprise when he feels a soft poke against his palm. He jerks his hand back from Harry’s belly. “Hey!” 

Harry beams at him. “You felt that one?”

“Yeah,” Jack says, awed. His heart’s racing. He spreads his hand back over the spot where the baby kicked him. It doesn’t feel awkward anymore. “Will he do it again?”

Harry’s face is close to his. “Yeah,” Harry says, so low it’s almost a whisper, and kisses Jack. 

The baby nudges against his hand again, but Jack’s got no attention to spare. Harry’s kiss is slow and gentle, with none of the reckless urgency of the night they met. Jack kisses back as lightly as he can, like he’s trying not to take anything from Harry. Or like he’s trying not to give anything away, not to subject Harry to any of his messy choking overwhelm at having this, finally, Harry under one hand and the baby under the the other and Jack’s arms can’t possibly stretch to hold onto the both of them, to hold onto everything he has to. 

The scrape of a key in the lock makes Jack jump. He pulls back, his lips buzzing. As Jack looks toward the door, Harry buries his face back against his shoulder. Jack recognizes the guy who walks in and dumps his bag beside the door.

“Zayn, this is Jack,” Harry says, muffled.

“Right,” Zayn says. “I remember you, from the bar.” He’s the one in the NASA hat, the one who’d taken Jack’s card from Niall.

“Nice to meet you.” Jack stands up to shake hands, dislodging Harry. “I hear you put up with a lot of puking.”

“I hear that’s your fault,” Zayn shoots back. “Want a beer?” Zayn slings his leather jacket over the back of a chair and disappears into the kitchen. 

“Sure.” Jack sinks back onto the couch. The spell is broken. Harry doesn’t reach for him. Jack waves his hand in the direction of the baby. “Does he do that all the time?”

“Yeah,” Harry says, sounding proud, running his hands down his stomach.

“What’s it feel like? Like, on the inside?”

Harry cocks his head to the side, considering. “Same as the outside, I guess,” he says. “It used to feel more like a goldfish. Like, kind of swimmy. But now you can tell it’s kicks.”

Zayn emerges from the kitchen with a can of PBR in each hand. He hands one to Jack and claims the battered recliner that sits at a right angle to the couch.

“You’re home early,” Harry says. Jack wonders whether Harry’s sorry about that, wonders what would have happened if Zayn hadn’t come in the door.

Zayn cracks his beer. “Interview went fast.”

“Interview?” Jack asks.

Zayn, it turns out, is a music writer for their city’s alt weekly, although mostly that means maintaining the paper’s calendar of events. “The pay’s shit, but I get to go to a lot of shows.”

“Who were you interviewing tonight?”

“Ever heard of Total Navajo?”

“Nope.”

A local band, Zayn explains, who just put out an EP. “Quick interview because none of them talk. They’re basically a band without a frontman. Hot chick drummer, though.” Leaving his beer on the coffee table, he squats in front of the television and starts to unwind the cord from around an Xbox controller.

Next to Jack, Harry pouts. “We were going to watch a rom com.”

“I can’t take another rom com,” Zayn says, quietly but with great conviction. “Jack, help me out here?”

“Game’s on,” Jack says helpfully, and Zayn switches the channel to ESPN, just in time for Draymond Green to muscle his way to a rebound.

“Traitor.” Harry elbows him, and then lifts Jack’s arm and maneuvers his way under it.

“Sorry.” For a moment Jack almost is, since he doesn’t care about the NBA as long as Harry stays burrowed into his side. He’d be equally happy to watch a rom com, or even watch Zayn play Xbox all night. But he’s not at all sorry about the opportunity that’s been presented to him, a watermelon of a pitch coming straight and easy across the plate. “Rom com tomorrow night?”

“Yeah, let’s do that,” Harry says, and Jack’s still no good at reading Harry but it’s possible that he sounds pleased. He reaches across Jack, takes the beer out of his hand, and slides it onto the coffee table. Then he tugs at Jack’s arm until Jack’s now-empty hand is positioned back in the same spot on Harry’s belly. The baby kicks, as if he’s happy to have Jack there. On screen, Steph Curry nails a three-pointer.

When Jack looks over at Zayn, he’s watching them. He meets Jack’s eye, a warning on his face, before returning his attention to the game.

***

The next night, Harry settles onto Jack’s couch like he’s a cat kneading his paws into a blanket, wiggling his back against Jack and adjusting Jack’s arms around him. Jack goes loose and cooperates with Harry’s manipulations. As Harry moves Jack’s hand onto his belly, he looks over his shoulder, a question in his eyes. “You’re not weirded out by, like…?” He looks down at Jack’s hand.

“No,” Jack says, which is the simplest answer, even if it feels incomplete. Harry looks unquestionably weird. The doctor’s appointments are weird, the crying is weird, every single thing about this entire situation is weird. But none of it has ever made Jack not want to touch Harry. If anything, it’s the opposite. The swell of Harry’s silhouette gives Jack an uncomfortable feeling of possessiveness, caveman-like.  _ I did that. Mine.  _ Probably Harry’s the one who should be weirded out by him.

He kisses Harry just above his ear. It’s a nice ear. Jack resists the urge to catch it between his teeth. Harry sighs with contentment and relaxes against Jack. Jack relaxes too, for what feels like the first time in weeks. Possibly Harry’s not the only one who’s been feeling touch-starved. On screen, food critic Julia Roberts slices decisively into an entree and pronounces it good. 

Jack doesn’t exactly follow the plot of My Best Friend’s Wedding; everyone seems to be behaving abominably. He spends most of the movie waiting for the baby to flutter under his hand, and appreciating the feeling of Harry warm and drowsy against him. By the time the credits roll, Jack’s almost nodding off himself. Last night had been sleepless, his body still processing the tension of the afternoon and his brain replaying the interrupted kiss over and over again, trying to figure out what it meant.

When the movie ends, Harry slowly extracts himself from Jack’s arms and bends down to lace his feet back into his Vans. “Can we do this again?”

Deprived of Harry’s furnace-like heat, Jack suddenly feels cold. “Do it tomorrow, if you want,” he says, and then worries that sounded too eager, too desperate.

“Really?” Harry straightens up. He looks surprised, but not in a bad way.

“Yeah, sure,” Jack says. Maybe he’s gotten it right again.

Harry kisses him, firmly but briefly. A good-night kiss. “Thanks.”

Jack resists the impulse to press his hand over his lips, as if Harry’s kiss is a thing he can keep there. “How are you getting home?”

“Busing it.” Harry retrieves his coat from the back of a chair.

“That’s crazy.” Jack’s already off the couch, reaching for his car keys on the counter. “I’ll drive you.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Harry says, but he hesitates instead of turning toward the door. 

“I don’t,” Jack says, “but I will.” It’s dark and cold and late out there, and he doesn’t like the idea of Harry waiting at a bus stop, Harry alone on a bus, round and vulnerable.

“Are you sure?” Harry says, but the protest is clearly out of obligation. He’s already following Jack out the door.

Harry messes with the radio in Jack’s car, switching it away from NPR. “You’ve got Sirius?” he asks. When Jack confirms, Harry murmurs, “Wonderful,” and scrolls to the Deep Tracks channel. It’s the first evidence Jack’s seen of good taste on Harry’s part. The drive across town passes quickly, comfortably, with classic rock on the radio and the city skyline shot through with the light-lined arms of construction cranes. Harry kisses him again before he gets out of the car, one last flash of the clean laundry and coconut smell that Jack’s been greedily inhaling all night, and for a moment everything almost feels normal.

Harry comes over again the next night, and again, and as the baby grows from cauliflower to rutabega to cucumber, he’s at Jack’s place in the evenings more often than not. Julia Roberts has a vast body of work that Jack has lived his life in ignorance of, and Harry sets about remedying this state of affairs as quickly as possible. “All I want to do anymore is to watch rom-coms in my sweatpants,” Harry tells him. “It’s nice to have somebody else to watch with.” 

“Works for me.” Jack doesn’t protest. If Harry feels safe with a rom-com, Jack feels safe with Harry on his couch. He’d watch every lousy romantic comedy ever made as long as Harry and the baby aren’t out there in the world without him. As long as he doesn’t have to wonder what Harry’s doing or who he’s doing it with.

“When Zayn got tired of it, I was taking my laptop into my bedroom,” Harry says. “Kind of sucked, though. I used to be better at being alone.” He looks down, reflective. “Which is stupid, since it’s not like I’m really alone ever, now.”

It takes Jack a moment, and a glance at Harry’s protective hand on his belly, to realize Harry’s talking about the baby. “I’m not sure he counts yet?”

“He counts,” Harry says with assurance, and Jack doesn’t argue. He smooths his hand over Harry’s belly, and Harry turns his head to kiss him lazily. Jack kisses back with careful restraint. Harry’s kisses seem born of the same comfort-seeking instinct that has arranging Jack’s arm around him and demanding that Jack rub his belly, kisses that are warm and pleasant and going absolutely nowhere. Jack fights against his instinct to take Harry’s face in both his hands, press him into the couch, open his mouth against Harry’s and swallow him down. He feels like he’s in an an egg and spoon race, all his focus on not upsetting the balance, keeping control over every muscle in his body that wants to pick up speed. 

One Friday night, as Harry searches romantic comedies on Netflix, Jack finally insists on Singing In the Rain. Rather than object to the interruption in the steady stream of mediocre rom-coms, Harry seems pleased to be let in on Jack’s comfort viewing, as if it’s reassuring that Jack’s got a candy-colored Hollywood secret as preposterous as Harry’s rom-com addiction. Jack opts not to tell Harry that his taste usually leans more toward war movies.

As Don and Kathy kiss in front of their billboard in the final scene, Jack realizes that Harry’s asleep on his shoulder. The remote’s on Harry’s other side. He tries to extract himself while easing Harry’s head onto the back of the couch, but Harry wakes up anyway. He blinks sleepily at Jack. “Sorry I passed out.” Through a yawn, he adds, “I should head home.”

“You can stay,” Jack offers immediately, impulsively. “If you want.” Shoveling a drowsy Harry into the car and driving across town seems both unappealing and unnecessary.

Harry blinks again, slowly. His response time is leisurely on a good day, and right now it’s further slowed by being half asleep. It seems to take him an eternity to think about it, while Jack tries to think of the most dignified way to apologize and grab his car keys. “How many pillows do you have?” Harry finally asks.

Jack mentally tallies them up. “Three on the bed, and a couple of spares for the couch. Do the couch cushions count?”

Harry thinks for another minute. “I can make that work.”

A fizzy feeling of possibility percolates up from Jack’s stomach. He holds out his hand, and when Harry takes it, he pulls him up off the couch. “There’s probably a spare toothbrush under the sink. You need anything else?”

“Nah, that works.” Harry shuffles toward the bathroom.

Jack turns off the screen and retrieves the spare pillows from the hall closet, where they live when Calum’s not visiting or Barry’s not passed out on the couch. He reminds himself that Harry’s only crashing here because he’s tired. He shouldn’t read anything into this. But he gets Harry all night, and that’s something.

He piles the pillows on one side of the bed, wondering what Harry’s going to do with them. Before Harry’s done in the bathroom, he trades his hoodie and jeans for pajama bottoms and a worn college t-shirt, trying not to think too hard about what to wear or not. The more he thinks about it, the weirder he makes it. Harry’s just sleeping here. His weight on the other side of the bed, his warmth, the sound of his breathing, that’s going to have to be enough.

Jack heads into the bathroom when Harry’s done. When he returns, his duvet’s risen into a massive misshapen mound that’s concealing Harry and all the pillows. All Jack can see is the top of his head, and the hood of his sweatshirt bunched up on the pillow. “What’ve you got going on there?” Jack asks, turning off the light.

Harry sighs. “You’re not supposed to sleep on your back,” he says. “So there’s one blocking me from rolling over.” Harry bobs his head awkwardly toward the pillow behind him, as Jack slides under the covers. Harry’s on his side, the top of one pillow peeking out from under the duvet where he’s got his arms wrapped around it. “Then everything else is out of alignment, so I’ve gotta have a pillow between my knees and a pillow under here.” Jack can feel the edge of that last one against his arm. It must be propping up Harry’s belly. “And this one’s just comfortable,” he adds, digging his chin into the pillow that’s wrapped in his arms. “Sleeping on your side is the worst.”

Jack turns his head toward Harry. His face is a pale smear in the darkened room. Jack knows without seeing how the dark mess of his hair looks against the pillow, limp and faintly curly at the end of the day. “How do you usually sleep?”

“Stomach all the way,” Harry says mournfully. He closes his eyes.

Jack remembers waking up in the middle of the night to Harry sleeping on his stomach next to him. In his memory, Harry’s slight, barely taking up any space. No resemblance to this massive shapeless mound insulated behind a fortress of pillows. Jack watches him for a minute. Then he rolls onto his side and cranes his neck over the pillow in Harry’s arms so he can press a light kiss against Harry’s forehead. “‘Night,” Jack says as he retreats quickly onto his back, the edge of his arm still just touching the perimeter of the pillow fort.

Harry doesn’t answer, but when Jack looks over, his mouth’s turned up in a faint sleepy smile. He stretches out a hand until the backs of his fingers brush Jack’s arm, sending glimmers of phosphorescence over Jack’s skin at their touch. Eyes still closed, he settles his hand in the crook of Jack’s elbow. “’Night.”

***

On a Saturday night at the end of week 27 (cucumber), Harry reaches over the top of the pillow fort and pokes at Jack just as Jack’s starting to fall asleep. “So,” he says. “There’s this thing next week…”

Jack’s instantly wide awake. He turns on his side toward Harry. “Yeah?”

Harry scrunches his pillow down under his cheek so he can look at Jack with both eyes. “I’ve been going to this prenatal yoga class.”

“Yeah, Tuesdays.” The night of the week that Harry can’t hang out. Not that Jack’s been keeping track. Not that he knows this is exactly the fourth time that Harry’s slept over.

“Yeah, that one.” Harry shifts in his pillows. “So next week we’re supposed to bring…” -- he pauses -- “...somebody...” 

Jack waits, wondering what word Harry was substituting for. “Yeah?”

“Do you want to come with?”

This is going to ruin Jack’s perfect record of never having attended a yoga class. “Do I have to know anything about yoga?”

“Nah,” Harry says. “Next week’s mostly supposed to be stuff for labor.”

“Labor?” Jack’s scalp feels prickly.

“This may come as a surprise,” Harry says dryly, “but I am planning to have this baby at some point.”

“Right.” Jack rolls onto his back. Obviously Harry’s not going to be pregnant forever. It’s just that Jack hasn’t thought too much about the actual event of becoming not pregnant.

“Are you going to be there?”

“’Course I will.” The answer’s automatic, before Jack realizes he’s not even sure what the question was. “At yoga?”

“Sure,” Harry says slowly. “But also when the baby comes.”

Jack turns his head toward Harry. So this is what it’s all been building towards, all the ultrasounds and the doctor appointments and the kicks and the belly rubs. Suddenly there’s an end in sight, an end that he might have a role in. “Do you want me to be?”

“Thought it’s only fair you get to see him first,” Harry says. “It’s okay if you don’t want to, I can find somebody else…”

“No, I want to be there.” Of course he does. Harry, one person, is going to go to the hospital, and he’s going to subdivide into two people. There’s going to be a new person who’s going to meet everyone else in their lives, who’s going to meet Jack. Meeting his son. It’s nice of Harry to think of it that way, when it hasn’t even occurred to Jack.

***

There’s a many-limbed goddess painted on the door to the yoga studio, and a strand of bells clanks gently against the glass when Jack pushes it open. The ponytailed girl at the front desk looks him over, eyes catching on his track pants and softball league t-shirt, and asks, “Are you here for partner night?”

“Partner night?” Jack echoes, liking the sound of it.

“Sign in here,” she instructs, pushing a clipboard toward him. “The prenatal class is in studio B. Do you need a loaner mat?”

“I guess so?”

The bells clank again, and someone claps Jack on the shoulder. “Jack,” Harry says, leaning his elbows on the counter and smiling at him. “You found it.”

The front desk girl’s expression becomes significantly more interested. “Nadine, you met Jack?” Harry asks. He circles around the desk to give her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Harry’s wearing yoga tights, looking far more appropriately dressed than Jack is.

“Not really.” Nadine looks over Harry’s shoulder at Jack. “I didn’t know you were…”

“So this is Jack,” Harry interrupts. “Jack, Nadine.” He pulls a worn punch card out of the front pocket of his hoodie and hands it to her. “Punch him on mine.”

“No extra charge for partners this week.” Nadine retrieves a hole punch from her spot behind the desk and decisively punches Harry’s card. She slides it back across the countertop to him. “You can show him where the mats are, right?”

“Can do.” Harry leads Jack toward a cluster of people waiting outside the doors marked Studio B, all of whom seem delighted to see Harry. He exchanges awkward belly-bumping hugs with several other pregnant men and women while Jack shifts awkwardly from foot to foot in Harry’s wake. He’s the only person, pregnant or not, who doesn’t have a neatly rolled yoga mat slung over his shoulder. Everyone else looks more appropriately dressed for yoga. Everybody else is also obviously paired up, looking like actual partners, instead of whatever Jack is. Just some guy from the bar in track pants.

“Nick!” Harry’s face lights up as he spots someone over Jack’s shoulder. Jack turns to look. It’s a tall guy who looks even more pregnant than Harry. They exchange an awkward side hug, too much belly between them for anything else, and Nick leaves his arm slung around Harry’s shoulders.

“Jack, this is Nick,” Harry says, smiling, his arm around Nick’s waist.

Nick’s eyebrows go up. “Oh, you’re Jack?”

Jack holds out his hand to shake Nick’s, if only so that Nick has to remove his arm from Harry. “Nice to meet you.”

“You too,” Nick says. He introduces Jack to the girl in his wake, who’s got thick-framed tortoiseshell glasses and hair dyed several different shades. “This is Aimee.”

“Aimee!” Harry exclaims and pulls her into a hug, even though she’s saying, “Nice to meet you” into his shoulder.

“Did you guys know each other before…?” Jack starts to ask Nick.

“No, just yoga friends,” Harry says, releasing Aimee and thankfully returning to Jack’s side.

“We’re the single dads in the class.” Nick grins at Jack.

Jack doesn’t grin back. He’s saved from further comment by the studio doors, which swing open to discharge the earlier class. The prenatal yoga crowd swarms in, organizing themselves into an uneven circle. Harry grabs a mat off a rack in the back of the room and hands it to Jack. Then he darts through the crowd to claim the spot next to Nick. Jack spreads his mat out on Harry’s other side and looks around the studio while Harry chatters away to Nick. Batik hangings cover the wall and the tendrils of a jade plant twine halfway around the edges of the room at the seam of the wall and the ceiling. The only illumination comes from strings of Christmas lights and a row of Chinese lanterns down the center of the space. It feels cozy, relaxed. No wonder Harry likes these classes.

“Welcome!” The instructor, seated at the apex of the uneven circle of yoga mats, calls the room to attention. Side conversations dissolve into whispers and then into silence. “Welcome to our partners, especially. I’m so glad all of you could be here tonight.” She smiles beatifically around the circle.

“We usually start this class by going around the circle and introducing ourselves.” The instructor glances from interloper to interloper. “And this week we’re going to have our partners do the introductions. You’ll share your names, how many weeks you are, and how this week’s been for you.”

One couple after another introduces themselves. Jack half-listens to their names and their pregnancy joys and woes for the week. Someone’s sciatica is acting up, someone had a good ultrasound, somebody has to go on bed rest. He’s more focused on trying to figure out what he’ll say when their turn comes. What week is it? All he can think of is fruit. He goes back to the last number he can remember, Harry’s 24-week appointment. It was during the NLCS, the only night the Cubs won a game. The baby was the size of an ear of corn. How many weeks has it been since then? Cauliflower, cucumber... is he missing one? Oh, there was the 26-week appointment, but was that last week or two weeks ago? He considers asking Harry, but then Harry will know Jack’s forgotten.

Before he makes up his mind, Aimee’s introducing Nick. “And I’m Nick’s friend Aimee,” she adds. “I went through all of this earlier this year, my daughter’s nine months old.” She leans to the side to pat Nick’s belly. “And her new best friend is 32 weeks along.” 

“How’s this week been?” the instructor asks.

“Great week, Georgia.” Nick reclines back on his elbows. “My feet are gone.”

“And you ate an entire box of Cheez-Its,” Aimee adds. “Don’t forget that.”

“Ah,” Nick says fondly. “That was a good day.”

“Thanks, Aimee.” Georgia turns her attention to Jack, as does the rest of the class. Aimee and Nick look at him expectantly.

Jack can feel Harry watching him with interest as he starts off with, “This is Harry, and I’m Jack.” Georgia nods encouragingly at him and Jack pauses. “Um, this week is… eggplant?”

Nick muffles a snort of laughter. “The best week,” he stage-whispers to Harry as Harry giggles. 

“Twenty-eight weeks,” someone on the other side of the room calls out.

“Thanks.” Jack realizes he was so focused on the date he didn’t even think about how to describe the week. “It’s been a good week, I guess?” He looks at Harry for confirmation, and gets a nod and a grin.

After the introductions, Jack makes it through some basic yoga stretches without embarrassing himself too deeply. Harry shucks off his hoodie, revealing a well-worn KISS t-shirt. Then the instructor directs them to sit facing each other, legs crossed, knee to knee. “I want you to synchronize your breathing,” she announces, pacing around the inside of the circle, inspecting everyone’s compliance.

Despite his unwieldiness, Harry somehow manages to get into position before Jack does. Jack crosses his legs and scoots toward the edge of his mat until his kneecaps are touching Harry’s, Jack’s used to touching him now, used to having an arm around him or a hand on his belly, but none of that requires him to look Harry straight in the eye. As his eyeballs dart in any direction except Harry’s face, he tries not to think about how green his eyes, are, how one eyelid droops a little lower than the other, how the stray corner of Harry’s bandana pokes out over the tip one eyebrow.

After a moment, Jack realizes he’s forgotten to breathe at all, let alone breathe with Harry. He exhales suddenly and inhales sharply, and Harry matches his next breath. In and out, breath by breath, Jack lets Harry pull him into synch. All the while, Harry’s gazing unblinkingly at him, smiling serenely. He looks Buddha-like, his belly filling up the hollow between his crossed legs.

Jack shifts. His track pants slide against Harry’s leggings, and he can feel the edges of Harry’s bony knees underneath them. Jack’s matching his breathing now without even trying, like there’s some current running between them. Maybe yoga works. He feels like oxygen’s filling his lungs deeper than usual, like his blood’s circulating more efficiently, flushing and tingling all the way to his extremities, pooling warm at his hips.

_Oh no_. He cannot do this, he cannot get a yoga class erection. Just from touching Harry’s _knees_ , that’s how hard up he is. He rests his hands on his calves and tries to focus on the space at the top of Harry’s nose, while he send urgent telepathic messages to his dick. _Not now._ _Cool it. Do not do this to me._ He sticks his tongue out of the corner of his mouth and grimaces at Harry, trying to disrupt things somehow. Harry stifles a laugh that knocks their breathing out of rhythm.

“All right,” Georgia announces, and Jack seizes the opportunity to turn toward her, drawing his feet up onto his mat and wrapping his arms around his knees. Georgia waits for everyone’s attention before she continues. “We’re going to try some counterpressure. Everyone who’s pregnant, I want you to be in child’s pose. Partners, watch me.”

Jack obediently watches Georgia, ready for any scrap of instruction that will prevent him from messing up whatever counterpressure is. So it’s disconcerting when he glances sideways at Harry and find him on his knees, arms stretched long on the floor in front of him, head bowed, looking like he’s waiting for someone to do filthy things to him. It is not an image that’s conducive to solving Jack’s current problem.

“Partners,” Georgia addresses them, “I want you to place the heel of your hands on your partner’s sacrum.” The term is meaningless to Jack. He watches with growing horror as Georgia kneels behind one of the students to demonstrate. She places her hands at the base of the woman’s spine. “Press downward toward the tailbone.”

Jack freezes while all the other partners get cooperatively into position. Georgia returns to pacing the circle, and looks directly at him. “Go on, Jack.” As if she’s remembered his name for the express purpose of making this moment even more excruciating.

He kneels behind Harry, hovering his hands over his back. Sure, he’s used to touching Harry now, but this isn’t Harry slumped against his shoulder on the couch or giving Jack a goodnight kiss before hauling himself out of Jack’s car. This is Harry on his knees in front of him, legs spread to accommodate his belly, yoga tights stretched over his ass. Jack swallows.

Georgia walks their way. “Press in and down,” she calls, to the room at large and Jack in particular. “Not straight into the pelvis.”

The back of Harry’s shirt says HOT N HARD, which seems completely unfair. Jack settles his hands above Harry’s narrow hips and presses downward. His thumbs line up with the dip of Harry’s spine. It’s a losing battle, trying to will the charged blood in his veins anyplace except his dick.

“Got it, Jack.” Georgia looks them over, still projecting advice to the room. “You want to apply strong, steady pressure, like you’re lengthening your partner’s back. Harry, how does that feel?”

“Good.” Harry’s voice is muffled against the floor. “Maybe a little harder?”

Jack leans his weight into the warm plane of Harry’s back, suffering.

“That’s right,” Georgia projects. “This is a great technique for back labor. You’re meeting the pressure the back of the baby’s head is putting on your partner’s sacrum.” She nods approvingly and moves on around the circle.

Jack reminds himself that everybody else in the class is doing this. It’s probably no big deal for all of these people who appear to be actual partners, and probably touch their partners all the time. It’s been 28 weeks since Jack’s had his hands on anybody from this angle, let alone Harry. He’s going to combust.

He sneaks a glance at Aimee next to him. At least she ought to empathize with the unpartnered awkwardness, if not the sexual frustration. She’s got a determined expression on her face as she rises up on her knees, leaning heavily on Nick’s back.

“Aimee, ever think you’d be in this position?” Nick says cheerfully into the floor.

“If I was in this position,” Aimee responds tartly, “I’d’ve wrapped it up.”

Harry shakes with laughter underneath Jack’s hands, and Jack’s face burns.


	6. Chapter 6

“Go ahead and leave your stuff in your room,” his mom says. “You want a Diet?”

“Yeah, that’d be great.” Jack angles his roller bag up the stairs. Calum’s room, next door, still has the lived-in look of a room whose owner might move back in at any moment, books on the bookshelf and photos on the bulletin board and a collection of high school t-shirts still in the closet. The room that used to be Jack’s has long since become a guest room, with an unfamiliar quilt on the bed and the walls repainted a neutral mint color. There was never any fear that Jack, with his MBA and his job at a Fortune 100 company waiting for him after graduation, would move back home.

Jack slides an envelope out of the side pocket of his carryall and heads back downstairs, where there’s a glass of ice and a can of Diet Coke waiting on the kitchen island for him. His mom’s slicing carrots on the other side of the island, her own Diet Coke at her elbow. The familiarity of the ritual is comforting. Jack hopes this conversation isn’t about to taint it forever. The bombshell that ruined Thanksgiving.

He pops the tab and concentrates on the hiss of soda over the ice cubes, telling himself he’s going to do it as soon as the fizzing stops.

“Calum’s driving up in the morning,” his mom says. “Didn’t feel like dealing with traffic tonight.”

“Makes sense.” Probably good that his folks will have a night to sleep on this one. They can all greet Calum in the morning with the news that he’s no longer the fuck-up in the family. Jack tops off his glass and waits again for the bubbles to subside. He takes a sip and sits the glass down, leaving a careful distance between the drink and the envelope, and wipes his hand on his track bottoms to get rid of the condensation. “I need to talk to you about something.”

His mom sets the knife down on the cutting board and focuses on Jack. “What is it?”

“So.” Jack folds open the envelope flap and tips out the ultrasound photos, sliding them across the counter toward his mom. He pulls his hand back fast so it’s not obvious that it’s shaking. “You’re having a grandson.”

His mom picks up the first photo and studies it, running her fingertips lightly over the baby’s silhouette. “Oh,” she says softly. Her finger stops at the corner of the image, where it’s marked with Harry’s name. “Who’s Styles, H.?”

“Harry,” Jack says. “He’s the father. The one who’s pregnant. I’m… the other one.”

She inhales sharply and touches the corner of her eye, and Jack realizes with horror that she’s crying. He hasn’t let his parents down since high school, since a keg party that he almost got away with but for one stupid solo cup somebody left behind a photo frame on the mantel. His mom had cried then and he hadn’t ever wanted to see it again.

“Oh, god, Mom, I’m sorry.” Jack grips the edge of the counter. “I’m so sorry.”

She looks up from the photo, one hand pressed flat to her chest. “Oh, no!” She circles the counter, coming toward Jack with arms outstretched, photo still clutched in one hand. “Sweetheart, this is good news.” Jack can’t remember if she’s ever hugged him tighter. He’s not going to cry, he’s not.

“A grandchild!” His mom pulls back and holds him by the shoulders. “I’m not crying because of that.” Letting him go, she leaves the photo on the counter and returns to the cutting board, positioning another peeled carrot. “It’s just… it took so much to have the two of you, sometimes when it happens so easily for someone else…” She picks the knife up and slices decisively down the center of the carrot. “It’s good that you’ll never have to go through that, that’s all.”

Jack doesn’t think much about being an IVF baby; it hasn’t affected his life at all. He wonders for the first time what it would be like to want a baby in the abstract, instead of a baby that’s already impending, ticking away like a time bomb. To want a baby in a way that’s not all tangled up with wanting Harry.

Neat half-moons of carrot start to pile up behind the knife. “When’s the baby due?”

“February 4.”

“That’s so soon!” The knife clatters at the edge of the cutting board. She looks up at Jack. “How long have you known?”

“A while,” Jack admits. He tries to remember what week plum was. “Like, late summer.”

His mom looks confused. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, fine.” Jack taps a finger on the edge of the ultrasound photo. “They keep telling us everything looks good.”

“Not the baby.” She looks pointedly at him. “I mean you.”

“I’m okay,” Jack says, automatically. Nobody’s asked that before. Jack stops to think about it. “I mean, this isn’t… anything I expected. But Harry’s great.”

“How long have you been together?”

“We’re not.” Jack swallows. “Not together.” His mom looks like she’s struggling to formulate a tactful question about conception and Jack has absolutely no interest in having that discussion with either of his parents ever. “We get along, though.”

“Tell me about him.”

As Jack tries to formulate an answer, everything sounds like too much.  _ I can’t stop looking at his face. Having my arm around him is the most satisfying thing I’ve ever felt in my life. _ He sticks with the basics instead. “He… works at a school. He’s good with kids.” Jack doesn’t have much direct evidence of this, but it seems right, from the way Harry talks about the kids he works with, infinitely patient, always assuming the best of them, even when he gets hurt. “He’ll be a good dad.”

“You will too, sweetheart.” It feels like something a mom has to say, something designed to be unconditionally supportive, rather than a conclusion she could have reached based on any objective evidence. “What’s that going to look like, when the baby comes?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” she says, scraping the carrots to the side of the cutting board, “who’s raising this child?”

“We both are.” Of course they are. Just because the details are… vague… doesn’t mean Jack’s not going to do the right thing.

“You’re not living together,” she says, her voice muffled as she bends down to retrieve a stockpot from the cupboard. She straightens up suddenly. “Are you?”

“No,” Jack says, over the noise of the pot clattering onto the stove. “Come on, Mom, I’d tell you if I moved in with somebody.”

“I never know,” she says darkly. “I have my suspicions that Saiorse’s moved in with Calum.” 

“Who knows who all lives in that house,” Jack says, torn between his instinct to cover for his brother and the lifeline of a convenient change in subject. He likes Saiorse, Calum’s tattoo artist girlfriend; if Calum’s convinced her to move in, he could be doing a lot worse. He’s pretty sure his mom likes her too. Saoirse was a champion Irish dancer in high school, and the Celtic diaspora sticks together. “Have you seen them lately?”

“Nice try.” His mom pours olive oil into the pot. The gas burner clicks and whooshes to life. “So where’s this baby going to live? Who’s getting up in the middle of the night with him?”

“I guess he’ll be with Harry, mostly…” Jack trails off. This is the kind of thing he hasn’t wanted to ask about. The baby’s all Harry’s at the moment, an insulated mystery impossible for Jack to approach. It’s hard to think of him as something separate, something capable of existing without Harry in the room. Something that could, in theory, be handed to Jack.

“What’s your role going to be?”

“I’m… involved,” Jack says vaguely. That’s the extent of his plans. To keep being there, keep trying to figure out what Harry needs from him, and eventually maybe it will coalesce into something that makes sense.

“That’s probably worth clarifying, don’t you think?” His mom scrapes a chopped onion into the stockpot. The oil sizzles.

“We’ll figure it out,” Jack says, defensively.

“I know you will.” His mom backs off. “It’s just…” She picks up the knife again, then sets it back down. “We want to know this grandchild.” She reaches for the ultrasound photo and weighs it in her hand. “Please make sure your rights are protected.”

“Mom!” Jack says, shocked. “Harry wouldn’t do anything like that.” Harry who’s invited him to every doctor’s appointment, who offered to name the baby Lowden, who’s refused to let Jack take the blame for all of this no matter how much Jack thinks he deserves it. It’s impossible to think that Harry would just… take the baby and run.

“It’s hard to have a baby,” she says. “Even when you’re together, even when you’ve wanted it more than anything in the world. People do strange things.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Jack insists. But even as he defends Harry, he remembers that Harry disappeared once before, didn’t he. It’s perfectly clear that Harry’s attached to the baby, from the coo in his voice when he talks to his belly, the scrawls in his journal, the way his hands unconsciously hover over the baby. But there’s no reason to think he’s equally attached to Jack.

***

On Thanksgiving Day, Jack lets his mom tell the rest of the family about the baby. Her delirious enthusiasm about her imminent grandchild is powerful enough to neutralize any judgment from his aunts or grandparents. Or maybe there wasn’t anything to neutralize, Jack realizes, as his uncle pitches him Scottish baby names and a cousin tells him about a baby monitor app for his phone.

After the last of the relatives leave and the last of the dishes are washed, Jack’s watching football with Calum and his dad when he gets a text from Harry. It’s a photo of a platter of… something. Something orange. It looks too healthy to be sweet potatoes. The explanation arrives a moment later:  _ i made gemma get acorn squash _

_ nice of him to be squash size for tgiving _ , Jack responds.

_ v festive _

Jack realizes it’s pretty far along in the day to be getting a photo of dinner.  _ late thanksgiving? _ he asks.

_ we eat late. you have dinner already? _

_ hours ago. going out with calum soon _

_ have fun! _

At the other end of the couch, Calum’s on his phone too. “Saoirse’s driving up tonight,” he says, thumbs tapping. “She’s sick of her family.”

“What time’s she getting in?” Jack asks. “Should we wait for her?”

“Nah, she can meet us out.”

Over Calum’s protests, Jack convinces him to go to the grungiest hole-in-the-wall tavern their hometown has to offer, on the theory that it’s the bar least likely to be full of everyone they know from high school. It feels weird to talk about Harry, and it feels weird to not talk about Harry, and Jack’s not up for making that decision again and again over a series of conversations with everybody he knew when he was a teenager.

It only takes Calum one beer to get there, though. “So how’d you knock this guy up?”

Jack snorts. “Pretty much the usual way. Didn’t Gordon go over this stuff when you were like seven?”

“No, dumbass.” Calum flicks a peanut at him from the grungy basket on the bar. “I meant, like… circumstances, right? How do you know him?”

“We met at a bar.” Jack shrugs, and takes a drink. When he sets his bottle back on the bartop, Calum’s still looking at him expectantly. “Bad decisions. I don’t know, not much more to it than that.”

“Jack Lowden,” Calum says with approval. “A one-night stand? A bastard son? Not what I would have expected from you.”

“Yeah, obviously,” Jack says sourly. It’s not what anybody would have expected. He doesn’t need his brother to rub it in.

“No, I mean, not like a bad thing.” Calum turns serious. “I just kind of thought all along you’d be married with a kid by now. The kid’s not really the surprising part.”

“What?” It’s a baffling turn of the conversation.

“You’ve just always been kind of an old man, right?”

“I have not,” Jack says, offended. How soon Calum forgets. “Whose fake ID got you through college?”

“That wasn’t a fake, it was your old driver’s license.” Calum nudges his empty bottle to the side and waves at the bartender for two more. “It was your solemn responsibility as an older brother to give it to me. You get no credit for that.”

Jack slams the rest of his beer, catching up. “I’m not an old man.”

“Jack.” Calum looks down his nose at him. The neon beer sign behind the bar casts blue light over the side of his face. “You played Frank Sinatra in your car in high school.”

It’s a point that Jack cannot dispute. But before he can cite countervailing evidence of his youth and vigor, he spots Saoirse at the door of the bar, peering around the room to find them. Jack waves, and she threads her way toward them through the scattered clusters of Thanksgiving drinkers. She jumps on Calum’s back, like a hummingbird alighting, and presses her cheek against his.

Calum turns to kiss her as she slides back onto her feet. “Hey, I’m gonna be an uncle.”

“Jack, really?” Saoirse stops in the middle of unwinding her scarf, wide-eyed.

“Yup.” Jack runs a thumb over his beard. “In February.”

“That’s great!” Saoirse pulls him into a hug. The sleeve of her plaid coat scratches against his neck. “Congratulations!” Her enthusiasm is uncomplicated by the note of puzzlement Jack’s heard from anyone else he’s broken the news to, and he hugs her extra hard because of it. “So who’s pregnant?”

“Harry.” Just saying Harry’s name feels like an entire paragraph of conversation, like the two syllables are stacked with layers and weighted with hidden meanings

Saoirse reaches for Calum’s beer and takes a sip. “Your boyfriend?”

“No.” It never gets easier to say. “Just Harry.”

“Okay,” Saoirse says, like it genuinely is. “Do you know if it’s a boy or girl?”

“Boy.” Jack knows, rationally, that his ability to sire a male heir says nothing about his worth or status or masculinity, but he’s happy about it all the same.

Saoirse claps her hands together. “Oh, you’re going to have so much fun with him!”

“You think?” Jack asks, skeptically. Fun still doesn’t seem like it’s part of the equation, baby-wise.

“Are you worried?” She puts a hand on Jack’s arm. “It’ll be  _ fine _ ,” she says. “Babies just need diapers and something to eat, and everything else works itself out.”

She’s so wide-eyed and earnest that Jack almost believes her. “How do you know so much?”

“Please.” Saoirse rolls her eyes. “I went to a Catholic all-girls high school. It was basically the world’s largest babysitters club. People just started handing me their babies at mass when I was, like, eight, and I figured out what to do. You will too.”

“I didn’t really want this.” Something about Saoirse’s straightforward positivity makes Jack want to tell her his doubts, to keep this flow of unconditional reassurance coming.

“You didn’t want kids at all, or just not now?” Calum passes Saoirse a beer.

“I figured  _ someday _ …”

“I used to nanny for these guys who said if you wait until you’re ready to have kids, you’ll never have them.” She leans back against Calum. “There are so many lousy parents out there. You’ll be good enough, and your baby’s going to love you.” Her voice swoops into a maternal coo at the end of the sentence, as if Jack’s a baby she’s addressing:  _ your baaaaaaaby’s going to looooooove you _ .

Her reassurance suddenly feels superficial, a comforting pat on the head that doesn’t touch the roots of his real concern. It’s not about being good enough for the baby to love him. It’s about being good enough that Harry will.

***

The conversation with his mom sticks in Jack’s head. Even after he’s back home, even with Harry curled up on his couch in his socks, snow melting off his boots by the apartment door. Harry declares that any time after Thanksgiving is Christmas movie season, and within a week, Jack becomes acquainted with While You Were Sleeping, The Holiday, and Love, Actually.

Friday night, Harry watches Bridget Jones’ Diary with his head in Jack’s lap and his feet tucked against the end of the couch. Jack rests his hand on the side of Harry’s belly. It’s nowhere close to where the baby might be moving, but Jack’s figured out that paying attention to the baby is less important than paying attention to Harry. Harry’s like one of those well-worn Buddha statues, glowing brighter the more he gets his belly rubbed.

After the movie ends, Harry rolls onto his back, yawns, and blinks sleepily up at Jack. “Okay if I stay?”

“‘Course it is.” It’s that easy anymore. Harry’s got a toothbrush by the sink in the bathroom and a spare pair of sweatpants draped over the chair in Jack’s bedroom. Jack puts their glasses in the dishwasher, plugs in his phone, and turns out the light in the main room. By the time he finishes in the bathroom, Harry’s making the final adjustments to his pillow fort.

He slides under the duvet on his side of the bed. Next to him, Harry tugs the pillow between his knees into the right position and falls silent. In the dark, everything feels like it could disappear.

“Hey.” Jack brushes his toes over the top of Harry’s foot, pretty much the only part of him he can reach past the pillows between them. “So what’s…” He tries again. “Are you…” and finally, just, “Is the kid ever going to stay here?”

“What do you mean?” Harry’s on his side, facing Jack, which means that if Jack were to turn his head to look at Harry, he’d see one eye over the top of the pillow that Harry’s wrapped his arms around and mostly buried his face in.

“After he’s born, will he ever sleep here, at my place.” Jack reaches for what he’s really trying to ask. “Like, with you,” he adds, and then that sounds like too much. “Or just him, whatever.”

“Do you want that?” Harry asks. Jack can’t tell if it’s slower than usual.

_ Which one _ , Jack wonders. “Sure.” When Harry doesn’t respond, he adds, “If you do.”

“Sure, yeah.”

“Should I get a crib?” Jack wonders aloud.

“We’ve already got one downstairs, we should just put it here,” Harry says sleepily. “It’s too big for my place anyway.”

“What are you going to do, then?”

“We’ll figure something out.” Harry sounds unconcerned. “He can sleep in a pack n play or something. Or just with me.”

Jack pictures Harry curled up in a narrow bed with the baby. The image makes him inexplicably anxious. There’s something lonely about it. He turns toward Harry. “What’s a pack n play?”

“It’s this thing you set up, like portable.”

“How do you even know that?”

“I’ve been registering.” Harry uncurls his arm from over his pillow and swats at Jack. “You’d be amazed at the baby shit that’s out there.”

“Probably so.” Of course Harry’s on top of it. Jack’s relieved that Harry is, and then nervous that he should be as well.

“We can set it up tomorrow, okay?” Harry closes his eyes, not waiting for an answer. Jack’s pretty sure this means he’ll be setting it up and Harry will be watching, sprawled on the bed, offering suggestions that have no relationship to how bolts and fasteners work in real life and trying to connect his phone to Jack’s speaker so that he can DJ a schizophrenic selection of classic rock and rap and country and pop princesses. Jack can’t think of any finer way to spend a Saturday.

***

Barry’s the first to notice, or at least the first to say something about it, when everyone comes over to watch football on Sunday. He leans into Jack’s bedroom, hand on the doorframe. “Look at this fuckin’ crib,” he announces. Fionn and Aneurin glance up from their laptops at the table, where they’re both logging in to track their fantasy teams.

“What’d you expect?” Jack asks, changing the channel from Red Zone to the local game. “Kid’s gotta sleep somewhere.” Not that he’d admit it, but he kind of likes the way the crib looks, filling up the empty corner of his bedroom. He’d sorted through the bundle of crib sheets and pulled out the least pink option before Harry could object. Its gray chevrons almost match his walls.

“Is ‘somewhere’ really your apartment?” Barry flops onto the couch next to Tom.

“Not, like, always,” Jack qualifies. “But they’ll be here.”

“Do you even know yet if it’s yours?”

Whether or not Barry has a point, the question rubs Jack the wrong way. Jack’s the one going to doctor’s appointments and setting up the crib and waiting with his hand on Harry’s belly for a stray kick. It doesn’t make any sense for it not to be his kid. But he’s not going to get into that with Barry. “Give it a rest,” he says instead, rubbing at a spot on his arm.

Barry changes the subject, and not in the direction Jack expected. “Niall’s all psyched to be an uncle.” He crams a handful of chips in his mouth from the bag on the coffee table.

Worlds are colliding, with an ominous crunch. “You’re talking to Niall?”

“Barry got him onto the trivia team,” Fionn says. “He knows a weird amount about politics.” Jack wonders how long this has been going on, and whether Niall’s working some angle by getting in with his friends. And whether Barry knows Niall’s history with Harry.

“See him more than you, anymore,” Barry adds, pointedly.

“Yeah, sorry.” Jack can’t argue with that. The whole reason the guys are here today is that Tom delicately pointed out that Jack’s been spending all of his time with Harry lately. “Baby stuff,” he adds. He resolves not to think about Harry and the baby this afternoon. Tom was right, it’s been too long since he’s seen the guys, and he’s going to enjoy it.

“Last one,” Aneurin says an hour later, cracking a beer from the fridge.

“I’ll do a beer run,” Barry says, to no one’s surprise. Barry’s basically a border collie who needs a task to keep him occupied. “Fionn, want to come with?”

“Amir’s closed,” Jack warns them as they zip up their coats. The bodega two streets over used to be their go-to. A couple of months ago it had been replaced, practically overnight, with a hole in the ground that’s busily becoming another mixed-use condo building.

“What? That’s bullshit.” Barry raps his knuckles on the counter. “You gentrifiers ruin everything.”

“Like you’re keeping it real in your hood.” The pit across the street from Barry’s apartment, destined to become a new light rail station, had consumed a couple of bodegas of its own. “CVS is the next closest.”

A few minutes later, Jack buzzes them back into the building without bothering to pick up the call. Barry bursts into the apartment and stacks two six-packs on the counter before tossing a small box at Jack. “Got you a present, brah.”

Slumped on the couch, Jack fumbles the catch. The box bounces off the side of his hand and he manages to slap it down in his lap before it lands on the floor. There’s no weight to it. For a moment he wonders why Barry bought him a box of Band-Aids, and then he lifts his hand and sees the label. The text is an accusatory red. IDENTIGENE DNA Paternity Test.

“Look what we found at CVS.” Barry lands back on the couch, ripping open a package of beef jerky. 

The box has a picture of a dad smiling at a baby. “You bought a paternity test?” Jack asks incredulously.

“It was awful,” Fionn sighs, long-suffering. “He leered at the checker.”

“I didn’t leer,” Barry objects. “It was a conspiratorial grin.” He turns back to Jack. “Twenty-two dollars, bro, you can thank me later. Lab fee’s on you, though.”

Jack picks up the box gingerly. Simple cheek swab, it says, above the silhouette of a q-tip. $89 Lab Fee Required. Results in 2 Business Days. He tosses it onto the coffee table and wipes his hand on his jeans. It feels like contraband, like he shouldn’t have it in his apartment. It’s impossible to watch football over the top of the smiling dad and baby. As soon as he can look casual about it, he takes the box back into the bathroom and abandons it in the bottom drawer, where it’s easier to forget.

***

“You coming over tomorrow?”

“I can’t tomorrow,” Harry says. “I’ve got to get the tree up.”

“Christmas tree?” Jack asks, surprised. “Tell me you’re not planning on carrying a tree up to your apartment.”

Harry sighs and sinks further into the couch. He runs his hands over his belly. “Christmas trees aren’t heavy, they’re just… awkward.”

“Yeah, so are you.” Jack pokes Harry somewhere in the vicinity of the baby’s foot. “I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t be carrying a fucking tree.”

Harry looks smug. “I was going to make Zayn do that part, but if you’re offering…”

Jack rolls his eyes. “You could have just asked.” All Harry ever has to do is ask. Jack can’t believe Harry hasn’t figured that out yet.

“Thanks.” Harry kisses him on the cheek, with an exaggerated smack. “I’ll buy you a hot chocolate.”

“There better be booze in it.”

When Jack picks Harry up the next evening, Harry directs him to a Boy Scout tree lot a few blocks from his apartment. He’s wearing a beanie and a giant plaid scarf. Jack can’t tell if it’s seasonal or if it’s an attempt to fill in the gap now that his coat doesn’t even come close to zipping.

Jack follows Harry up and down every row of trees, listening to Harry assess each candidate against an elaborate set of criteria. Height, width, density, branch strength, fragrance… Jack tunes out the specifics and just enjoys Harry’s enthusiasm, his face glowing under the strings of round-bulb lights that line the boundaries of the tree lot.

Harry finally circles back to a tree in the first row. He studies it with his chin propped in one hand. “I think this one’s the winner,” he says, looking at Jack for concurrence.

“I hate to break it to you,” Jack says, “but they all look exactly the same.”

Harry’s face has two main settings: smirking or offended. Jack goes for offended whenever possible. “Maybe to someone with no taste,” Harry says.

“Maybe to anyone who’s not a total dork about Christmas trees.”

Harry waves to the closest Scout, who scurries over with two of his friends. They efficiently untether the tree and haul it toward the gate with Jack and Harry following in their wake. Two troop moms are running the cashier’s tent, bopping along to the Christmas radio station on a portable speaker. Jack wonders if this is what’s in store for them, if their kid’s going to be a Boy Scout, whether they’ll ever have to work any weird fundraisers for him. The Scouts argue over whose turn it is to use the tree shaker while a parent measures the tree and announces the total.

“And two hot chocolates,” Harry adds, handing over a couple of twenties. He smirks at Jack. “Told you I’d get you one.” Mariah Carey sings in the background as a Boy Scout fills two paper cups with hot water from an urn and carefully splits a packet of hot chocolate mix between them. After stirring them with a plastic spoon, he hooks a candy cane over the rim of each cup and hands them to Jack and Harry.

“Cheers,” Harry says, touching his cup to Jack’s. Granules of powder float on top of the liquid. Jack tries to stir it together with the candy cane, which melts stickily on his fingers. Harry watches him over the rim of his cup, holding it in both hands, blowing at the steam. He’s got hot chocolate at the edges of his lips. Jack’s never wanted to kiss him more.

***

“Careful of the top,” Harry warns from the landing as Jack trudges up the stairs behind him, tree balanced on his shoulder. Harry was right, it’s not that heavy, but Jack’s still behaving as if he’s performing a great service.

Zayn’s on the couch when Jack hauls the tree through the door Harry’s holding open. “Thanks for sparing me.” He pauses the Xbox to watch Jack deposit the tree in the center of the room. “Are you gonna get it in the stand, too? That’s the worst part.”

Jack looks at Harry. Harry looks hopeful. “Would you mind?”

Jack does not mind. Harry disappears into his room and returns with a tree stand and two shoeboxes. He positions the tree stand in the corner of the room and directs Jack to lift the tree into the stand and tighten the bolts while Harry holds the trunk in place. After an extensive calibration process (“Tighten the one on the left… no, your left… no, the next one over… now loosen the one closest to you… a little bit more…”), during which Zayn offers unhelpful commentary from the couch, Harry finally approves. 

Harry’s already uncoiling a string of lights when Jack squirms out from under the tree and brushes the needles off of his shoulders. He wraps the lights around the tree with practiced technique, passing them off to Jack on every rotation, and then settles on the couch with one of the shoeboxes on his lap. He pulls out a tissue-wrapped bundle and unrolls it carefully as Jack watches. It’s an ornament, a reindeer made out of clothespins. Harry slips an ornament hook through its string and offers it to Jack, dangling by its hook from his index finger. “Hang it up?”

Zayn’s watching. It feels like a test. Jack gingerly slides the ornament off Harry’s finger and hooks it over a branch, choosing the spot at random. He looks over his shoulder at Harry, waiting for his approval. Harry smiles contentedly. He unwraps another tissue paper bundle to reveal a stuffed cat made of blue calico. “Oh, the cat,” Harry says, as if the reveal has delighted him. “Gemma’s got a matching one, only hers is pink.”

“Are they all family ornaments?” Jack asks.

“Yeah, my mom packed them up for me after college.” Harry keeps unwrapping, lining ornaments up on the coffee table. “All the ornaments we got when we were kids.” He nudges the box of hooks closer to Jack and Jack picks up the ornament closest to him, a metal silhouette of a guitar. “That was from the year I took guitar lessons,” Harry says. “I have a lot of childhood awkwardness commemorated as ornaments.”

“Why the piano?” Jack points at a different ornament.

Harry’s trying to slide a hook onto the thin wire of a glass pickle ornament. “That was a different year.”

“A basketball?” Jack grabs a hook for that one.

“Like I said, a lot of childhood awkwardness.”

They finish decorating the tree together, Harry explaining the backstory behind each ornament. So many of them seem to have come in pairs: Gemma has a mouse with a red scarf, and Harry has one in green. Gemma has the Big Bird ornament to Harry’s Cookie Monster. Gemma has a matching seashell with googly eyes from some childhood beachcombing expedition.

One of the last ornaments out of the boxes is a crude felt wreath with a photo glued crookedly in the center, almost certainly by a very young Harry. Jack snatches it out of Harry’s hands. “Well, look at you,” he says, studying the two towheaded children in the photo. The girl has a Christmas dress and mary janes, and the boy has a holiday sweater vest and wide-set eyes that are unmistakably Harry’s. 

Harry makes a grab for the ornament, but Jack’s taller and also not seven months pregnant. He dangles it just out of Harry’s reach. “You were so blonde!” Jack says. “You and Gemma?”

Harry lunges and grabs the ornament. “Yup,” he says, hanging it on the back of the tree, close to the floor.”

“Come on.” Jack rescues it. “You were adorable. This needs a place of pride.”

“It’s awful,” Harry says. “I made it in kindergarten. I only keep it because my mom would never forgive me otherwise.”

“Is our kid going to look like this? Because I’d be fine with that.” Jack positions the ornament front and center, moving a painted pine cone out of the way.

Harry crosses his arms. “Move that ornament, or I’m buying him the same sweater vest.”

“You’d never.” Jack relocates the pine cone to the back of the tree and adjusts the strand of lights so there’s a bulb directly above the photo wreath.

Zayn’s disappeared into his bedroom. After a half-hour of listening to Harry’s family history told via Christmas ornaments, Jack ventures a question. “What does your family think about all of this?” He waves his hand at Harry’s belly.

“Actually…” Harry’s got a can-you-believe-this expression on his face. He walks over to the table, where there’s a messy stack of mail, and pulls out a bubble envelope with the end already ripped open. He tips the contents into his hand. “My mom sent this last week.” Jack takes a few steps closer, looking down at the Christmas ornament balanced in Harry’s open palm.

It’s a pottery star, painted blue and white. Something’s stamped in the center in typewriter lettering. Jack peers at it. Baby Boy 2017, it says.

“So I guess you could say she’s excited.” Harry slips a finger through the ornament string, dangling it toward Jack.

“Okay,” Jack says. He swallows. “Okay.” The baby suddenly feels very real, a person whose life has already started to be quantified in Christmas ornaments, just like Harry’s. Jack takes a step back toward the coffee table and fumbles for an ornament hook. Harry takes it from him and moves toward the tree.

“They’re actually going to be in town this weekend.” Harry’s got his back to Jack, focused on hanging the star ornament toward the top of the tree. “My mom and Gemma and my stepdad.”

“That’s nice,” Jack says, absently, making a mental note that this’ll be a good weekend to watch football with the guys. He starts to gather up the pieces of tissue Harry scattered in his enthusiasm to get to each ornament. 

“They’re kind of curious about you.” Harry turns toward him. He’s lined in the colored light from the Christmas tree. The star ornament dangles just above his shoulder. “Do you want to have dinner with us Saturday?”

This is all hopelessly out of order. They’re having a baby and the baby has a Christmas ornament and he’s got no idea where he stands with Harry and now he’s supposed to meet the parents. He’s never going to get this straightened out; everything is his fault and Harry’s family’s probably going to hate him for it. But Harry’s looking at him, waiting for an answer, and it’s never going to be anything but yes. 

***

On Saturday Jack waits for Harry and his family in the entryway of a nice seafood restaurant, looking longingly toward the bar. There’s a giant Christmas tree next to him, covered in trailing red ribbons and oversized silver ball ornaments. Jack scoots to the side when he realizes he’s in the way of a family wanting to take a photo in front of the tree. 

He rocks onto his toes and reminds himself that he can do this, he’s good at this part. Parents love him. He’s got a collared shirt and a nice sweater and a job with a 401(k). This feels more fraught than any other time he’s met the parents, though. Maybe that’s because it’s Harry. Or maybe meeting Harry’s family would have been easier when the stakes were lower, before there was a baby. Before he was so gone on Harry that the baby almost makes sense.

Jack’s stomach tightens when he sees them come in, Harry’s mom and sister first, with his stepdad holding the door for all of them. Harry smiles when he sees Jack, and ushers his family toward the Christmas tree. “This is Jack, everybody.”

Harry’s mom has Harry’s soft edges. Jack goes to shake hands with her first, and she pulls him into a hug instead. “I’m Anne.” She smells like perfume, and her coat is still cold from outdoors. “It’s so nice to meet you.” She pulls back and inspects him. “Harry’s told us so much about you.”

“Really?” Jack asks, surprised.

“She has to say that.”

“Gem,” Anne says, a gentle warning in her tone.

Gemma’s got sharp eyes and hair that’s an uncanny shade of white-blonde. She slides a slim clutch under her arm so she can shake Jack’s hand. “Nice to meet you,” she says, her tone perfectly pleasant and her face blank.

Robin’s next, with a firm handshake and a fisherman’s cap. He turns toward the host stand after meeting Jack, and Jack turns toward Harry and the more pressing matter of what Harry’s wearing. “Nice pants.” He’s honestly not sure if he’s being sarcastic or not. Anything looks good on Harry, but in the abstract they’re probably terrible pants. Bright goldenrod yellow, with a print that looks like… “Are those houseplants?”

“Yup,” Harry says proudly. “We went shopping today.”

“Poor boy didn’t have any clothes that fit,” Anne says, looking Harry up and down with fond tolerance.

“Looks like you did well.” Harry’s black shirt has some kind of skinny ribbon tie things that hang down loose from his neck. Jack wants to wrap one around his hand and feel the tension, to pull and pull until Harry stumbles into him.

Robin comes back with the hostess, and they follow her into the dining room. Harry nudges Jack toward the seat across from Gemma, and sits between them at the head of the table. Robin sits on Jack’s other side, and doesn’t even give him a chance to look at the menu before he starts asking Jack about what he does and where he went to school. Jack clings to his company’s familiar name like it’s a life preserver, like Robin’s approving nod of recognition is rescue on the horizon.

“Think you’ll stay there long-term?”

“Don’t have any plans to go anywhere for now,” Jack says. “My stock options vest next year, so.”

Robin nods approvingly, again. “Good reason to stick around.”

“Well, and there’s room to move up, and I’ve got good mentors there.” I am stable, Jack thinks, I am responsible, I am really not the worst person to impregnate your son, all things considered.

Anne asks Jack if he’ll drink white -- yes, please, Jack will drink absolutely anything at the moment -- and orders a bottle of wine. “Let’s toast to Christmas,” she says, after the waiter fills everyone’s glass.

“And to Gemma’s birthday,” Harry adds

“Thank you, little brother,” Gemma says, smiling at him sweetly and superciliously.

“It’s your birthday?” Jack asks. Harry hadn’t mentioned that.

“Just missed it,” Gemma says. “It was last weekend.”

“Twenty seven,” Anne says fondly. “They’re growing up.”

As if to disprove her, Harry sticks his finger into Gemma’s wine glass. “Brat,” she says, flicking his ear. So many more things about Harry make sense now. He’s every bit the younger sibling, bratty and beloved and accustomed to being indulged.

It’s an early dinner; Harry’s told him they’re seeing the Nutcracker later. Jack asks Anne if it’s a tradition. 

“A new one, maybe,” Anne says. “Gemma couldn’t get the time off at Christmas, so we decided we’d celebrate early this year, while we’re all together.”

Gemma takes a sip of wine. Her eyebrows are just like Harry’s, but sinister. When Jack asks what she does, the answer that she’s an attorney doesn’t surprise him. 

“What kind of law?”

“Transactions,” she says, a polished fingernail tapping against the rim of her bread plate. “I just started with my firm this year. Junior associates don’t get the holidays.”

Anne turns to him. “How about you, Jack, will you be with your family for the holidays?”

“No, I thought I should save the vacation time, for, you know, next year…” Jack glances down at Harry’s belly. 

“That makes sense,” Anne says, smiling at him. She looks over to Harry.

Jack realizes that Harry’s staring at him, wet-eyed, with his head tilted to the side. “I didn’t know you were doing that.”

“Sorry,” Jack says, suddenly embarrassed. “Is that weird?”

“No, it’s great.” Harry leans over to kiss him on the cheek. “Thank you.” Jack’s face burns. He’s accidentally shown his cards and somehow the house hasn’t raked in his chips and shown him the door. Anne’s smiling. Robin’s smiling. Jack’s winning.

He keeps on winning right through the salads and the halibut and the very small sips he takes to ration his glass of wine to the end of the meal. When the dessert menus come out, he excuses himself and takes his time backtracking past the bar through the lobby, savoring a couple of minutes without anybody’s eyes on him.

On the way back from the bathroom he sees Gemma coming from the opposite direction. Jack smiles and nods at her as they pass each other by the Christmas tree, and Gemma stops. “Hey,” she says, pointing her blood-red clutch at Jack like a weapon. He wouldn’t be at all surprised if a bullet came out of it. “My brother’s a catch.”

“Well, yeah,” Jack says. He wishes he’d caught Harry. He pictures Harry as a trout, gleaming in the sunshine as he slips out of Jack’s net. No, not a trout, something… rounder. Like those fish that puff up.

“Don’t fuck this up.” Gemma walks away before Jack can say anything, the heels of her black boots clacking purposefully on the tile floor.

Jack remembers that Gemma’s his age. The older sibling, with her graduate degree and her law firm job, who’s cleared the way for Harry to fuck up without making their parents feeling like failures. Gemma probably never broke curfew in high school, and Robin and Anne probably responded by not giving Harry a curfew at all. Maybe Jack’s working his way into their parents’ good graces, but Gemma knows. Gemma knows exactly how unprepared he is, how much he’s faking it. Jack thinks again about how he’d react if somebody knocked up Calum, what he’d think of that person, what a dumb idea it would be for Calum to have a baby.


	7. Chapter 7

They’re spending more time at Harry’s lately, because Harry wants to hang out with the Christmas tree. It’s a little like being back in college, Christmas lights and all. Through the window by the tree, Jack can see fat snowflakes drifting faster and faster past the streetlight.

Harry’s tucked under his arm, with his knees in Jack’s lap, watching The Notebook on the laptop that’s next to Jack’s feet on the coffee table. Every so often he absently reaches up to scratch Jack’s beard, like it’s a terrier. Jack is ignoring the movie and poking at the baby’s feet, which are just below one distorted wing of the butterfly under Harry’s shirt. He’s trying to figure out if there’s a trick to getting the baby to kick back. Sometimes he’ll respond when Jack pokes him, sometimes he won’t. According to the app the baby’s a large jicama this week, week 32. (“Wouldn’t want a small jicama, would we,” Harry had observed.)

Jack stretches out his socked foot to nudge the laptop closed when the movie ends. He shifts and stretches, getting ready to go. Harry hasn’t ever suggested that he stay the night, and he’s not crazy enough about the idea to suggest it himself. Harry’s place is a long way from his office. And Zayn seems like a good guy, but Jack considers himself to be too old to make awkward conversation with a roommate first thing in the morning.

When Jack shrugs Harry out from under his arm, Harry makes a disgruntled noise and burrows his face between Jack’s shoulder and the couch. Jack ruffles his hair and kisses the top of his head. “Sorry.”

Harry slowly slumps to the side as Jack stands up. “What are you doing this weekend?”

Jack makes a face. “Just the office party.”

“Office party?” Harry cocks his head up from the couch cushion. “What’s it like?”

“Pretty standard,” Jack says. “A bunch of toasts, and everyone pats themselves on the back about how it was a good year, and you get to see who everyone’s married to.” Jack feels some obligation to dislike the stereotype of the office party, but it’s never that bad. It’s at some trendy Asian fusion place downtown this year, and he’d be perfectly fine with it if he didn’t have better ways to spend a Saturday night. Such as on the couch with Harry.

“I love that place,” Harry says when Jack names the restaurant. “You’re lucky, we just have a potluck at school.”

“Oh, the food’ll be good, for sure.” 

“Do your friends all go?” 

“It’s just my division.” Not that his coworkers aren’t friends, but. “I mean, I like everyone, mostly, but Tom and Barry and those guys won’t be there.” 

Harry gets a gleam in his eye. “Can you bring a date?”

“Yeah, but it’s not like…oh,” Jack says, realizing just in time. “You want to come?” he asks in disbelief. Harry at his office party, meeting everybody. Being pregnant. He feels that itch of possessiveness on the backs of his hands, at the top of his spine.

Harry lolls his head against the back of the couch. “Sure, why not?”

“Because it’s boring?” The last thing he wants is to talk Harry out of this, but he feels obligated to be perfectly clear that this is not going to be some kind of, like, amazing night. Not like a date. Or at least not like Jack would want a date to be, if they went on dates.

“I bet it’s not,” Harry says. “Just think of how many business words I’ll learn.”

“Are you sure?”

Harry smirks. “A little party never hurt nobody.”

“All right,” Jack says. “You’re in. Don’t blame me when it’s the most boring night of your life.”

“What’s dress code?” Harry asks.

“Um.” Jack’s never thought about it. “Like, festive, I guess?” He wonders if “business festive” is a thing, or something that just occurred to him. “People wear Christmas ties. I mean, not me. What you wore last weekend was fine.”

Harry lifts his head. He looks Jack up and down, calculatingly. Then his eyes go wide, in a way that looks suspiciously innocent. “Would you wear your kilt?”

“Um.” The kilt’s power is not to be squandered on mere office parties. “Do you want me to?”

Harry nods. Jack regrets the likely end of his lucky kilt streak. But if Harry wants the kilt, Harry gets the kilt. “Prepare yourself. You might not be able to handle it.”

“I think I’ll manage.”

***

Jack takes an Uber to Harry’s place on Saturday, even though Harry had offered to meet him. Secretly, as Harry gets larger and larger, Jack doesn’t like the thought of him out at night, alone, making his way down snow-slicked sidewalks. He knows it’s irrational -- Harry’s a grown-up, he’s not going to break, he can take care of himself -- and he’d sooner die than admit it to Harry or anyone else. But here he is, riding halfway across town and asking the driver to wait while he crunches up the salt-covered steps outside the apartment building before Harry can emerge from the front door.

His legs come into view first as he descends the apartment stairwell. The potted plants pants, again. He’s got another enormous scarf compensating for his unzipped jacket, black this time. They’re going to be a memorable pair tonight, Jack in his kilt and Harry with his crazy pants and enormous belly. Jack’s suddenly nervous. Not about Harry, exactly, but about the collision of Harry and all of his colleagues at once. What it’s going to say about him, and whether that’s true.

Harry’s eyes light up when he sees Jack through the glass of the front door. “Love the kilt,” he says, as soon as he pushes the door open. Jack’s knees are freezing, but it’s absolutely worth it.

Jack fidgets in the backseat on the way downtown while Harry chats up the driver, asking her whether she lives in the city and if it’s going to be a busy night tonight. Jack waits for an opening, but by the time they get off the freeway, she’s telling Harry about her grandchildren and advising him what he should pack for the hospital. Finally, a few blocks from the restaurant, he has to break in. “Just so you know, this is going to be news to everyone, pretty much.”

“You haven’t told anyone?”

“It just hasn’t come up.” It could have come up. He could have dropped it into any how-was-your-weekend conversation he’s had in the past few months. And he would have, if he’d had any way to explain Harry. Any good label.  _ How was your weekend? Set up the crib, yeah, my boyfriend’s pregnant. _ That would be easy.  _ Set up the crib because I knocked up some guy at a bar last spring _ , well, that’s not a conversation Jack wants to have around the copy machine. Or at the office party. He’s got to figure something out, and he’s got to do it now, two red lights from the restaurant. “So, introducing you…”

Harry cuts him off. “You mean I can’t just be a man of mystery?”

Jack gestures at Harry’s belly, but it might as well be a gesture at his entire person. “You don’t exactly blend in.”

“Let’s pretend it hasn’t occurred to us,” Harry says. “First person who asks if I’m pregnant, I’ll be like, ‘Oh, am I? I hadn’t noticed.’”

Jack plays along. “‘Harry, Ken here thinks you might be pregnant, have you considered that possibility?’”

“Seems unlikely, Ken,” Harry says. “Surely somebody would have told me by now.”

“Maybe we should look into it.”

“Nah,” Harry says with a dismissive gesture. “I’m sure it’ll work itself out.”

The driver passes the front of the restaurant, blocked by two cabs. “Gonna have to let you out down the block, that okay?”

“Anywhere’s fine,” Jack says, and she pulls over. Jack slides out and offers a hand to Harry, who’s awkwardly maneuvering himself across the backseat of the Camry. Harry takes his hand to pull himself out of the car, and then keeps it as they pick their way over the hard layer of snow at the edge of the sidewalk. 

“Careful.” Jack points out a patch of ice and lifts their hands to steady Harry. It’s well-salted, but Jack’s not willing to give Harry any credit for good balance.

“I got it,” Harry says, offended, and promptly slips. Jack grabs his arm before he goes down. He almost manages not to laugh as Harry windmills his other arm and gets his feet back under him.

Harry gives him a sheepish look. “Fine, you were right.” He squeezes Jack’s hand harder and grabs Jack’s upper arm with his other hand. “Protect me.” Harry leans heavily against him as they make their way toward the entrance, and Jack doesn’t ever want to let go.

As they approach, a splash of pink emerges from a black Audi at the curb in front of the restaurant. Jack recognizes his coworker Emi, in a bright and shaggy coat like a muppet pelt. Lou, in a pale and equally fuzzy coat, scoots out of the backseat behind her. Lou and Emi are the ones in his department who remember birthdays and plan happy hours and leave macarons in the break room on Valentines Day.  _ Here goes _ , Jack thinks, staring over the apex of the roller coaster.

As Emi’s husband Adam hands the keys to the valet, Emi spots Jack. “Oh my god, it’s a kilt!” She grabs Lou by the arm and points at Jack and Harry. “I love it!”

“Wow,” Lou says, walking toward them. “You really went for the whole…” She gestures up and down Jack: the vest, the sporran, the kilt hose. Nobody ever knows the vocabulary to finish the sentence. “Love it,” she concludes, and looks toward Harry. Her voice turns sweet and inquisitive. “I didn’t know you had a boyfriend?”

The roller coaster crests and plunges.There’s only one possible answer, with Harry leaning into his side and lacing his fingers through Jack’s. “I do,” Jack says, wishing it was true, hoping for forgiveness. “Harry, meet Lou and Emi.” Harry’s expression is unruffled. He releases Jack from his grip and shakes hands with everyone.  _ Please just go with it _ , Jack thinks, looking hard at Harry’s profile and wishing for telepathy.

Lou and Emi exclaim over Harry’s pants as they all move into the restaurant and then into the coatroom off the lobby. Harry falls into step with the women. Behind them, Jack shakes Adam’s hand. “Adam, good to see you.” The first year Jack had come to the holiday party, he’d snuck out to check the score of the basketball game in the restaurant’s bar. Adam was there first.

“I like the kilt,” Adam says.

“Thanks,” Jack says, shrugging out of his coat and choosing a hanger. “I like your shoes.” Adam’s black boots have rainbows on top of them. 

“You know, I actually got them from work.”

Before Jack can ask what that means, Emi gasps. “Are you guys having a baby?!”

Jack looks over at Harry, who’s unwinding his scarf from around his neck. The outerwear must have camouflaged his belly enough to deflect inquiries, but there’s no hiding it now. “Yeah,” Harry says, hanging up his coat and resting his hand in the spot that means the baby’s kicking or Harry’s hoping he will. “Due in February.”

Lou whips her head toward Jack. “Congratulations!” Jack didn’t know it was possible for congratulations to sound so accusatory. “I had no idea!”

“Thanks,” Jack says, again, moving to take Harry’s hand and prompt them all out of the coat room and toward the host stand. “It just hasn’t come up at work.”

A girl in all black with a sleek bun directs them upstairs to the private dining rooms. Jack tugs Harry back to put a few steps between them and the others.

“Hey, I’m sorry about that,” he says low to Harry as they climb the open stairway in the center of the restaurant. “Thanks for rolling with it.”

“What?” Harry shoots him a puzzled glance.

“The whole boyfriend thing.”  _ Sorry I called you my boyfriend, sorry that I’ve got to ask you to keep playing along, sorry this is all mixed up and out of order, sorry for everything, forever.  _ “But it would be easier, just for tonight, if we could…”

Harry stops halfway up the stairs and turns to face Jack. “I’m not your boyfriend the rest of the time?” There’s an edge to his voice that Jack can hear even over the din of the restaurant.

“No!” Jack’s horrified reaction is about Harry’s tone instead of his words, and as soon as he sees Harry’s eyes narrow he realizes he said the wrong thing. “I mean,  _ yes _ , I mean…” He grips Harry’s hand tighter, guarding against the possibility that Harry’s going to walk back down the stairs and out of the restaurant. “...Are you?”

“If you want me to be,” Harry says, guardedly, leaning back against the railing away from Jack. He doesn’t drop Jack’s hand.

“Of course I want that.” Jack wants to kiss him, really kiss him, kiss his  _ boyfriend _ , but the entire restaurant’s spread out below them and Lou’s looking back from the top of the stairs and his bosses could be anywhere. “That’s all I want.” Which is true, in the sense that he wants it in an all-consuming kind of way, and yet Jack also wants more, wants it all, wants the night they met over and over again. 

“That’s it, that’s all you want?” and there’s the smirk that started all of this, the original version of Harry appearing back from the dead, the one that looks like he’s already planning how to get his hand up Jack’s kilt. There it is, the feeling that all of this is going somewhere. Jack wants to shove him into a wall right now.

“God, no,” Jack says, turning back up the stairs, “but it’s a start.”

Lou and Emi are waiting at the top of the staircase with an endless series of questions about whether it’s a boy or a girl and have they thought about names and which hospital they’re going with and have they registered for a BOB stroller because it’s an absolute necessity, and Jack finally touches Harry on the elbow and tilts his head toward the bar. Harry nods.

“Congratulations, man.” Tom leans against the bar next to Jack as Jack asks for a beer and something nonalcoholic for Harry. “I didn’t know you had a baby on the way.” Tom raises his eyebrows, the nonquestion clear.

“Yeah, thanks,” Jack collects his drink and waits for the bartender to pour a ginger ale for Harry. He ignores the nonquestion, even though if anybody at work’s entitled to ask, it would be Tom. He straightened out a couple of messes Jack made early on, and Jack’s been at his desk asking for advice more than once. He’s just far enough ahead of Jack that he knows all the answers, but not so far that Jack feels dumb about asking the questions.

Tom doesn’t push it. “Let me know if you ever want to talk about how to deal with that with work.”

“Is it a problem?”

“Oh, no, not at all.” Tom squeezes the lime into his gin and tonic. “Makes you look stable. Guy with a family to support and all.”

“I didn’t know that.” It’s kind of the opposite of what the women he went to b-school with used to talk about, barely out of undergrad and already worrying about having a baby someday and being passed over at work. Guys getting bonus points for parenthood doesn’t really seem fair.

“Wedding ring’s a better look, though,” Tom says mildly.

Jack freezes with his pint glass halfway to his lips. “I’ll keep that in mind.” Harry’s drink is cold in his left hand. He holds it up and gestures over his shoulder, in Harry’s direction. “I’d better…”

“Go on,” Tom waves him away. “You’ll have to introduce me later.”

“Will do.”

He rejoins Harry and Lou and Emi, just as Harry tells them, “...so he says, ‘Um, eggplant?’” As he hands Harry his drink, he stares at his hand and pictures what it would look like with a ring. He can’t tell if he’s terrified by the possibility, or the impossibility.

Harry slides into the office party just as easy as he slid into Jack’s group of friends at the bar. Every question about the baby segues into unsolicited parenting advice, and Harry collects recommendations for cloth diapering and baby food makers and bars that have play tables in the corner. Jack realizes that Harry’s using the same trick he did the night they met, fitting himself into conversations without giving any of himself away.

As it turns out, kids are just one more thing to talk about, like college basketball or the new oyster bar or who just bought a Tesla. Jack loses track of Harry, or maybe Lou and Emi have just appropriated him. His yellow pants are lighting up a conversation on the other side of the room. Cocktail hour passes in a steady stream of coworkers telling Jack how much they like Harry.

They get stuck at a table with Ken for dinner, and endure a lengthy monologue about the merits of private schools. As the dessert plates are finally cleared, Jack gets up to fetch another drink for himself and a tonic and lime for Harry. He catches Harry alone at their table when he returns, pretty much the first moment they’ve had to themselves since they walked in the door. Jack sits down next to him and slides his drink over. “I think you won office party.”

Harry stretches like a smug cat. “If we’re playing a game, I want to win.”

“Thanks,” Jack says. “Seriously.”

Harry leans in close and whispers hot against Jack’s ear. “I’m happy to keep being office party boyfriend.” Jack feels a hand curl around his knee, under the tablecloth. “But I’m ready to go whenever you are.” Harry’s silk cuff brushes the inside of his knee as his fingertips inch higher along Jack’s thigh, under his kilt.

Jack presses his knees together, trapping Harry’s wrist. Harry tries to wiggle his fingers, smirking. Jack is going to destroy that smirk, obliterate it.

“We’re gonna be like the first to leave,” Jack says. “Can you look very tired and pregnant?”

Harry obediently yawns and looks up at Jack with sleepy eyes.

“Brilliant,” Jack says, standing up quickly. “Off we go.” He leads Harry through the room to say an obligatory thank-you to Emma, the VP over his department, even though Emma’s assistant probably did all the party planning.

Emma’s close to the bar with her husband, Chris, talking to Ken and his wife. The circle expands for Jack and Harry as they approach. “Jack,” Emma says to him interestedly, as she shakes Harry’s hand. “I’ve been wondering who you had with you tonight.”

“This is Harry,” Jack says. He probably should have said hello to Emma sooner, but the night’s been a steady onslaught of baby questions and unsolicited advice and Jack’s had very little choice in the matter.

“And who else?” Emma asks, looking at Harry’s belly.

“Due February 4,” Harry says serenely. “It’s a boy.”

Emma launches into all the same questions they’ve been answering all night long, how Harry’s feeling and whether they’ve picked a name and what hospital they’re with. As soon as Emma says, “When I had Flora…”, Jack tunes out. Everybody’s got a birth story to tell, and Harry’s paying rapt attention to all of them, but Jack does not need those details.

“So,” he says, as soon as he gets an opening, “We’re going to take off. Long night.” On cue, Harry leans his shoulder into Jack’s, looking appropriately tired.

Ken tips his glass at Jack. “Stay out late while you can,” he says, walking a fine line between advice and condescension. “Babysitting doesn’t come cheap.”

Harry laughs good-naturedly. “I hear we’re also supposed to sleep while we can,” he says, squeezing Jack’s hand.

“Sleep training,” Chris proclaims. “You’ve got to start early with sleep training.” Chris is the stay-at-home dad to Emma’s corporate breadwinner. Jack half-remembers that Chris is writing a screenplay or something. He’s always suspected that Emma’s the brains of the operation.

“Thanks,” Jack says. “We’ll look into that.” He starts backing toward the door, and when no one says anything to keep them there, turns and leads Harry out by the hand, as fast as he can discreetly manage.

***

There’s a cab right in front of the restaurant, thank god, and Jack waves it down and holds the door open for Harry. As soon as Jack gives the driver his address, Harry gracelessly hauls himself into Jack’s lap. He’s heavy and awkward and his head’s shoved up against the ceiling, but before Jack can give him a hard time about it, Harry’s hands are in his hair and his mouth’s on Jack’s, fierce and urgent. After weeks of lazy contented kisses, this one feels like waking up, like hitting cool water with the spring and snap of the diving board echoing behind him.

Jack steadies Harry on top of him with one hand and works the other into the gap where Harry’s shirt’s come untucked over his hip. He’s spent weeks learning Harry’s contours now, knows what he feels like through a coat, through a t-shirt, through a hoodie, and he’s done with that. He spreads his hand wide across Harry’s back, greedy for every inch of his skin.

The hem of Harry’s shirt cuts into his wrist. Street trees covered in Christmas lights flick through his peripheral vision when he opens his eyes. The cab must be hitting every green light on the way out of downtown, or else the driver’s just trying to get them out of his backseat as quickly as possible. Everything’s suffused with the same reckless urgency of the night they met, but instead of careening toward a precipice, it feels like they’re running downhill, picking up speed together, knowing the destination.

Harry pauses, his hands braced against the seat on either side of Jack’s head. It looks like he’s trying to pull his head back to say something, or to get a good look at Jack, but the ceiling’s in the way. Jack tilts his head back and forth, trying to get to an angle where he can look Harry in the eye. All he can see is his smile. Jack’s legs are going numb under Harry’s weight, and he can’t move an inch in either direction, and they must look ridiculous in the rearview mirror, but Harry’s finally, finally as close as Jack wants him to be.

In front of his apartment, Harry struggles off of his lap and Jack shoves a twenty at the driver without waiting for change. Every detail is icicle-sharp in the winter air: the crunch of the snow under the tires as the car pulls away, the disarray of Harry’s hair haloed in the streetlight, his puppy-cold nose poking into Jack’s neck.

Harry leans back against the wall of the elevator with a slow smile. Jack gives up on the thought of trapping him against the wall; Harry’s belly makes a front approach impossible. He slides sideways against him instead, and wraps his hand slowly around the back of Harry’s neck to pull him into a kiss. This time he’s going to remember all of this, every tiny increment of the way their faces fit together and every soft movement of Harry’s lips against his.

Harry’s hand is at Jack’s hip, gathering up the fabric of his kilt until he he can slip his hand underneath. “Boxers?” Harry runs his thumb under their hem, disappointed.

“I’m not  _ that _ Scottish,” Jack says, as his floor dings and he tugs Harry out of the elevator and down the hall.

Jack doesn’t bother to turn on the light in his apartment. Harry knows his way through by now, even in the dark, but Jack leads him through the main room by the ties of his shirt anyway, looping the loose ends around his hand and pulling until Harry stumbles into the bedroom with him.

Harry sprawls back on the bed when Jack lets go. The hem of his shirt rides up, exposing a stretch of ink over the swell of his belly. “Shoes?” he asks, pulling his knees up so his boots are resting on the duvet.

“What?” Harry looks like an archipelago on Jack’s bed, the jut of his knees and the mound of his belly forming two islands. 

“Take my shoes off for me?” Harry lifts his head so he can see Jack. “It’s a pain to bend over.”

Jack snorts. “I thought it was some weird sex thing.” He tugs at one of Harry’s boots until it slides off. “You’re really just too pregnant to take your shoes off?” 

“I can do it,” Harry says, as Jack pulls off his second boot. “But it sucks.” He swings his feet over the side and pushes himself up to sit on the edge of the bed. Jack sits next to him, and Harry’s fingers find his buttons, working at them determinedly as their kisses intensify. Harry shoves Jack’s vest back off of his shoulders and runs his hands up Jack’s sides, under his unbuttoned shirt.

Jack’s resolve to take this slow, to savor every moment instead of tipping into the sloppy laughing abandon of their first night, dissipates at the feeling of Harry’s hands on his skin. He tugs Harry’s shirt over his head, wanting to press himself against him, feel every inch of him. The sight of Harry’s swollen body in the dim light stops him short. Harry looks ripe, pluckable, a heavy fruit about to give way from the branch. The butterfly in the frame of his ribcage slopes gently over the top of his belly, the edge of one wing marking the place where Jack’s used to feeling the baby kick.

Jack runs the back of his knuckles along the side of Harry’s belly, gently. Harry presses forward into a kiss, like he wants to avoid Jack’s eyes on him. Jack lets him get away with it. He uses his hands instead to feel out every contour of Harry’s strange shape, hoping for Harry’s ever-pleased reaction to having his belly rubbed. Finally, when Harry’s humming with unselfconscious pleasure and working his hand back up Jack’s kilt, Jack asks, “So how does this work?”

“Just like usual,” Harry says, in that voice that Jack wants to slowly drown in. “Only not on my back.”

For a moment, Jack regrets that he won’t have Harry breathing hot and damp against his neck while he’s inside him, won’t get to see how his face twists itself when he comes. A memory to recover another time, maybe. There are other options tonight. “Let’s get you on your hands and knees, then.”

Harry makes an approving noise, and Jack pulls him to his feet. Jack leaves his kilt puddled on the floor, watching as Harry kicks off his plants pants. His’s cock’s hard in the shadow of his overwhelming belly when he turns to arrange himself on the bed, looking over his shoulder at Jack with an expression that’s wanting and open and a little bit apprehensive.

“Got you,” Jack says, running a hand down Harry’s belly as he kneels behind him. It’s the only way he can think of to give voice to the undercurrent of  _ mine mine mine _ that’s reverberating inside his head.

He runs the edge of his thumbnail slowly up the inside of Harry’s thigh, resolving again to remember every second of this, every inch of it, the shape of Harry’s ass in his hand and the way he shivers when Jack traces his thumb along the edge of one cheek. Harry moans, low, and Jack drags his thumb back even more slowly, brushing past Harry’s rim without making contact. Harry pushes back against Jack’s palm.  _ Wait for it _ , Jack thinks.  _ Your turn to wait _ . Thirty two weeks he’s been waiting to have Harry spread out and wanting, and he’s going to take his time now.

He wraps his hand around Harry’s hip and bends down to sink his teeth into the top of Harry’s thigh, up against the curve of his ass.  _ This is for walking out _ , Jack thinks,  _ this is for every week of bloodless kisses _ . He drags his tongue back toward the center of Harry and licks at him slowly, torturously slow, waiting for each of Harry’s gasps and moans as Jack gets deeper and closer.  _ This is for being 23, this is for not telling me you were my boyfriend _ . “Please,” Harry whispers roughy as Jack uses his lips and teeth, holding back, heat coursing through him at the sound of Harry begging, begging for him.

Coarse hairs catch on his tongue as he runs it along the cleft of Harry’s ass, flicking at his hole. His beard scrapes damply over Harry’s tender skin. “Jack,” Harry whines through gritted teeth, “please, please,” and Jack savors it, makes it last, lets Harry get desperate and shaky as Jack works his way closer in smaller and smaller increments. When Harry’s pleas disintegrate into wordless moaning, Jack finally sinks his tongue inside of him.  _ I love you unreasonably _ , Jack thinks, with the taste and smell of Harry flooding his senses. He feels like he’s the one who’s begging.  _ I love you without making any sense, and you are going to destroy me.  _

Jack stretches up the bed and leans over the edge to snag the supplies on the floor. When he surfaces with lube and a condom in hand, Harry’s rolled onto his side, looking at him. “Do we have to?” Harry asks.

“No, sorry, no, no of course not.” Jack starts to sit up, wondering how it’s possible that he completely misread this.

“Not that.” Harry grabs his shoulder and tugs him back down, laughing. “I just meant…” Harry voice trails off and he touches a finger to the condom wrapper in Jack’s hand.

_ Oh. _ “Well, yeah,” Jack says, defensively, slumping back onto his side to face Harry. This is the right thing to do. He’s going to get it right this time.

Harry arches his back and pushes the side of his head into the pillow, looking up at Jack with one half-lidded eye.. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

“I dunno,” Jack says, “I just thought… are you sure?”

Harry taps his fingers on the side of his belly, right where the laurel leaves start to stretch out. “It’s not like I’m gonna get pregnant.” 

“If you want to…” Jack leaves the question in his tone. He reaches out to cover Harry’s hand with his own. Maybe this is a different kind of second chance. Not another shot at getting it right, just the possibility of getting back what he missed.

Harry smirks at him and laces their fingers together. “You didn’t mind last time.”

“I don’t even remember last time.” It eats at him, how he doesn’t know what happened on what was maybe the most important night of his life. Doesn’t remember making the biggest decision he ever made.

“I’m offended.” Harry kicks at Jack’s ankles.

“Was it good?” Jack scoots closer, up against Harry’s belly, and drops Harry’s hand so he can trace his own down Harry’s back.

“Yeah.” Harry closes his eyes, the corners of his lips curving up in a smile. “Yeah, it was good.”

It seems fair, that Harry gets to know. He’s the one who’s carrying the physical manifestation of that night, so maybe it’s fitting that he gets to carry the memory too. Jack’s only ever going to get the story on Harry’s terms, only have what Harry’s willing to share. “Tell me,” he says, as he flips open the cap to the lube and nudges his knee between Harry’s. “Tell me about it.”

Harry slings an arm over him and and pushes his face into Jack’s neck, humming contentedly when Jack slides his first finger inside him. He whispers it low and filthy against the skin just below Jack’s ear, broken by gasps and whines when Jack adds another finger or curls them just right, telling Jack how their first time was so good, so hard, so deep, and by the time he trails off with a breathy moan at “...so close to you,” Harry’s slick and open and Jack’s so hard he could cry.

He pushes at Harry’s hip, trying to roll him back onto his knees, and Harry looks at him with dark eyes as he maneuvers awkwardly up and over. “Do you remember what you said, after?”

“No, tell me.” It’s uncanny, from this angle, how Harry doesn’t look pregnant. Jack drags a hand down the long bare line of his back, feeling each knob of Harry’s spine under his thumb. Too much, he tells himself, it would be too much to kiss each one.

“Not now,” Harry says. His fingernails dig into the sheets with soft scratchy sounds as Jack slides between the tops of his thighs. Harry’s breath catches. “C’mon and fuck me.”

The words twist somewhere between Jack’s hipbones, He’s going to remember it all this time, every single sublime and agonizing second of the tight hot push inside Harry, every noise that Harry makes, every pull of his hand along Harry’s cock in the close space under his swollen belly. He’s focusing so hard on holding every bit of it secure in his mind that it’s not until after that he remembers, not until he’s stretched out on his back with the last traces of his orgasm burning and fading in his joints and Harry’s head on his chest. Harry’s breath is evening out, and Jack’s just on the edge of sleep when he pulls himself back. “Hey,” he murmurs to the top of Harry’s head, “Hey, what did I say last time?”

“You sure you want to know?” Harry traces his hand slowly along the curve of Jack’s ribcage, down his side, over his hip.

“Is it bad?”

“Not bad.” Harry turns his head. Jack feels Harry’s nose poke into his chest, then the press of his lips.

“What, then?”.

“You said…” Jack feels Harry’s smile against his skin. “Like, right after…” -- Jack holds his breath -- “...you said, ‘You’re perfect.’”

“I did  _ not _ ,” Jack says, automatically, horrified. That’s not something he’d say. That’s not something he’s ever even thought about Harry. Harry wears ridiculous Hawaiian shirts and he cries all the time and he has an obscene mermaid tattoo and he thinks papayas taste good. “There’s no way I told you you’re perfect.” 

“You did.” Harry’s laughing, his belly shaking against Jack’s side.

Jack wants to deny it, but if that first night felt anything like this time, perfection’s not entirely out of the question. “No wonder you walked out.” Jack regrets the words as soon as they’re out of his mouth. As if whatever blackout shit he slurred isn’t bad enough, this makes it a million times worse. Harry didn’t owe him anything, and he doesn’t need to know that Jack noticed, or cared, about how he left. He extracts his arm from underneath Harry and slides out of bed. “I’m gonna brush my teeth.”

He blinks against the sudden brightness of the bathroom light. At the sink, he washes his hands and splashes water on his face, rubbing it through his beard. When he straightens up, Harry’s in the mirror, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed. His leafy tattoos are grainy and distorted over the bottom of his belly. “Walked out?”

“In the morning.” Jack folds the nearly empty toothpaste tube over to squeeze out the last bits. “It’s fine.” He closes his mouth around his toothbrush before anything even stupider can come out.

“I didn’t walk out.” Harry joins him at the sink. He rinses and spits, and then jams his thumb into the crumpled toothpaste tube to force the last of its contents onto his brush. “It was a good night,” he says around his toothbrush. Of course his mouth has room to talk with a toothbrush in it. “Mornings…” he trails off, shrugging. “I wasn’t exactly looking for any of this.”

Jack slurps water and spits, bending down to escape Harry’s eye contact in the mirror. When Harry’s the one who left, there’s no real difference between not looking for Jack, and not wanting Jack. “Glad that worked out for you,” he says, light as he can, reaching for the joke. He hip-checks Harry as he rinses out his toothbrush and leaves him behind at the sink, grateful to slink back into the darkness of his bedroom.

The toilet flushes just as Jack locates his boxers on the floor. He puts them on and settles back into bed on his back, not facing Harry’s side, not turning away. Just… there. A half hour ago he had Harry begging and now he’s at Harry’s mercy again. The room darkens as the light from the bathroom disappears, and Harry clambers into bed a minute later, bringing his extra pillows with him. The mattress shakes as Harry thrashes around like a sea lion, shoving pillows into position between his knees and under his belly. In the process, he squirms closer to Jack than usual, and cranes his neck over the pillow wrapped in his arms until he can sink his chin into Jack’s shoulder. “Glad it didn’t,” he says.

Jack turns his head to look at Harry, not wanting to ask  _ really? _ or  _ you sure?  _ “Very glad,” Harry says anyway, and gives Jack a damp, toothpasty kiss that’s as good an answer as any, slow and sweet and convincing.

***

Jack wakes up with his shoulder wedged against Harry’s back. The rest of the pillow fort appears to be intact, but at least he’s breached one wall. He rolls onto his side, fitting himself against Harry and wrapping an arm around him. Halfheartedly attempting not to wake him, Jack presses his nose against the top of Harry’s spine, breathing in the warm scent of his skin.

Over Harry’s shoulder, the gray chevrons on the crib sheet are just visible in the wintry light bleeding in slivers at the edges of the blinds. Jack tucks his forehead against Harry’s back and allows himself to picture it, really picture it for the first time: the baby an indistinct silhouette in the crib, and the pillow fort razed, and Harry still here, still in his bed, lean and eager.

Harry stirs and wriggles backwards into Jack, humming with sleepy interest when their hips connect. Heat prickles over Jack’s skin. He was already half hard, an unsurprising side effect of Harry naked in his bed, but now he’s wide awake, feeling static at every point of contact, 

Harry starts the laborious process of turning over to face Jack, one limb at a time, shedding pillow after pillow, culminating with hauling the bulk of his belly up and over. “‘Morning,” he mumbles, kissing Jack’s collarbone and draping an arm over his ribcage.

“Yeah,” Jack agrees. He runs his hand up Harry’s back and slides his fingers through Harry’s hair, scratching at his scalp. Harry makes a contented noise. His belly’s enormous between them, pressed up against Jack’s stomach. If the baby moved, he might be able to feel it. He tucks his chin to kiss the top of Harry’s head. Everything’s in the right place. Jack tries to hold perfectly still, to make it last as long as possible.

When Harry moves, it’s to drag his hand down Jack’s side. Jack feels like a struck match, catching and flaring in the wake of Harry’s touch. 

“Why haven’t we been doing this?” Harry’s slow voice rubs pleasurably against every single one of Jack’s nerves.

“I didn’t know you wanted to.” It’s hard to talk or think or remember anything with Harry’s hand on his hip, his thumb tracing small circles under the waistband of Jack’s boxers. “Not since the first time.”

“I do.” Harry’s hand stills. “I did. It’s just…” This is probably important. Jack tries hard to listen and understand. But Harry’s curling his hand over his hipbone, and his forearm brushes Jack’s cock through the thin fabric of his boxers, and it takes all he’s got to stop himself from thrusting into the friction. “...I just… I look really weird, and nothing works the way it used to, and I want my body back.”

Jack spreads his hand over the side of Harry’s belly. “You do look pretty weird...”

“Wrong answer.” Harry pinches him.

Jack slaps at his wrist until Harry lets go. Harry leaves his hand under Jack’s boxers, so Jack figures he can’t have gone that wrong. There’s probably a tasteful way to finish this sentence, even a romantic way, but Jack can’t think of it with Harry’s hand an inch away from his dick. All he’s got is blunt honesty. “...but there has not been one moment in the last, what, seven months when I haven’t wanted to fuck you.”

“Better answer,” Harry says, kissing his way up Jack’s neck to the underside of his jaw.. Jack exhales, open-mouthed, as Harry closes his hand around him. “Really?”

“...really,” Jack echoes. Harry’s hand is large, and warm, and moving smoothly over him. Distantly, through sparks, Jack recognizes that Harry’s question was probably a bid for some other level of reassurance. “You’re…” He tries to think of the right way to tell Harry he’s still gorgeous, still desirable, still infinitely fascinating, but Harry’s moving faster and this is not going to last nearly as long as Jack wants it to.

“...perfect, right?” Harry lifts his face just so he can smirk up at Jack, and circles his thumb slowly around the tip of his cock.

“Definitely not perfect,” Jack manages to gasp out, but as the orgasm melts through him, turning everything slow and syrupy, he can’t remember a single reason why.

He rolls onto his back and gets an arm around Harry. Coherent thought returns a few minutes later. Just as Jack starts to consider options for reciprocity, Harry scoots backwards. “Think I’m going to shower.”

Jack tries not to sound disappointed. “Okay.”

Harry swings his feet onto the floor and pauses, sitting on the edge of the bed. He looks over his shoulder at Jack. “Join me?”

“In a minute.” Jack stretches and closes his eyes, savoring the lingering glow of his orgasm and the contrast between this morning and the one last May. The bathroom door closes behind Harry, not the apartment door. He’s not being left without a note or a last name; he’s got Harry’s number in his phone, and his crib in his bedroom, and Jack’s baby inside of him, and this is really happening. 

Jack discards his sticky boxer briefs on the bedroom floor. On his way to the bathroom, he stops in the kitchen to put on water for coffee. While he’s at the sink filling the pot, Harry emerges from the bathroom and closes the bedroom door behind him.

Jack doesn’t think anything of it, until Harry comes back in sweatpants and a t-shirt. His plants pants and shirt from last night are wadded up under his arm.

“What…?” Jack asks, confused.

Harry retrieves his jacket from the couch. He doesn’t look at Jack as he puts it on. “I’m gonna take off.”

The back of Jack’s neck tightens at the phrase, an echo of what Harry’d said last time he left. He doesn’t point it out, as if saying it out loud would cement the connection. “I can drive you,” he says instead. “Give me a minute to get dressed.”

Harry says something in response as Jack pulls on a clean pair of underwear from the dresser, but Jack misses it. He pokes his head out of the bedroom. “What?”

“I’ve got a Lyft on the way.” One of the ties from Harry’s black shirt dangles down from the bundle of clothes under his arm. Harry twines it through his fingers, looking at the ground.

Jack’s stomach is suddenly unsteady, which doesn’t help the feeling that it’s May all over again. “What’s going on?” He moves to intercept Harry on his way to the door. When he reaches for Harry’s arm, Harry flinches. It feels like a slap. “Why are you leaving?” He can’t help the edge of panic in his voice.

Harry turns his shoulder toward Jack, his hand on the doorknob. “This probably wasn’t a good idea,” he says, his tone guarded. 

“Wha…” Jack’s still trying to find the right thing to ask when Harry closes the door behind him. Jack can’t follow wearing nothing but his boxers. He stands in the middle of his apartment, shocked and hurt, holding his hands open in a wordless question. 

***

He checks the bathroom for clues, although he doesn’t know what he’s looking for. (A bloody bandage? A cryptic note on the mirror?) He doesn’t find anything out of the ordinary, only Harry’s towel hanging neatly on the hook behind the door.

Eventually Jack puts on the coffee, and showers, and hangs up his kilt, and makes his bed. He scoops up his sticky discarded boxer briefs from the floor and puts in a load of laundry so that he doesn’t have to see them again. He tries to tamp down the sick, panicky feeling in his stomach and reason away his ominous sense of deja vu. Just because Harry left again, just because he used exactly the same words, that doesn’t mean things are the same now. He remembers everything from last night, and nothing went wrong. He’s pretty confident that they didn’t have bad sex. They’re having a baby. That has to mean something. 

And this time, Jack knows how to find him. After a couple of hours, he starts with a text.  _ you OK? _

Nothing. Maybe Harry doesn’t have his phone with him, maybe he needs some time. Jack gives it another couple of hours before he tries calling and gets sent straight to voicemail.

He texts again.  _ I’m worried. Let me know you’re ok. _

Nothing.

He knows from the group chat that the guys are watching football at Aneurin’s. He could go, but he’d be uselessly watching his phone, ready to drop everything at any contact from Harry. He doesn’t want to explain why he’s on edge.

He types the same texts again and again, and deletes them unsent. 

_ what’s going on _

_ I don’t understand. _

_ tell me what happened _

_ I thought we were _

_ you can’t just _

As dusk falls, he tries to call one more time. When Harry’s voicemail greeting picks up with its cheery “Hello!”, Jack cuts off the call, while his other hand’s already reaching for his car keys. Harry can refuse to pick up, but this time Jack knows where to find him.

His tires bump over a strip of frozen snow on the way out of the parking garage. It’s one of those suspended animation winter days: no new snow, too cold for anything to melt. Everything on the route to Harry’s apartment looks exactly the same as it did from the Uber last night. Jack parks next to the garbage bins, just like always.

This is the first time he’s scanned the row of call buttons by the front door, though. He’s always arrived here with Harry before. Just as Jack locates the button with “Malik/Styles” in a cramped scribble next to it, a woman clatters down the stairs and rushes out the door. Jack abandons the call button and catches the door before it closes, bypassing one more way for Harry to ignore him. 

He pauses for a moment outside Harry’s apartment door. Pink Floyd is playing. He can hear voices talking as well, but with the music in the background Jack can’t identify who’s talking or what they’re saying. He knocks three times, sharp but not heavily.

Zayn opens the door just wide enough to see who’s there. His eyebrows arc in surprise when he recognizes Jack. “How did you get in?”

“Is Harry okay?”

“Yeah, he’s okay.” There’s something loaded in Zayn’s tone. “Look, you don’t need to be here.”

“What the fuck is going on?” Jack cranes his neck to see over Zayn’s head. In the crack of the door, he can see one end of the couch, and Harry’s legs stretched out on it. His Vans are tucked up against the arm. “Why won’t he talk to me?”

“It’s okay, Zayn.” Harry’s voice is tired. Jack barges into the room as soon as Zayn steps out of the way, and stops short when he sees Niall sitting on the other end of the couch. Harry’s lying on his side, facing the door, his head resting on Niall’s lap.

Jack’s heart lurches, like it’s trying to punch him from inside of his chest. That’s his boyfriend. Or not. Apparently not anymore. Not with his face on somebody else’s thighs. Niall’s got one hand on Harry’s shoulder and the other in his hair.

“What the fuck?” is on the tip of Jack’s tongue, but at the sight of Harry struggling into a sitting position, it feels too harsh. Harry looks bulky and disheveled and worn out, with his hair flat and his hands tucked into the front pocket of his oversized hoodie. All Jack wants is to sink down on the couch next to him and let Harry curl into his side. But apparently that’s not what Harry wants anymore. He looks up at Jack with an expression Jack doesn’t know how to read.

Jack takes a deep breath. “It’s fine if you don’t want to…”  _ be together _ sticks in his throat, and he pushes past it. “...but you can’t just stop talking to me.” He reaches for his trump card, the tie that Harry’s not going to be able to shake. “We’re having a baby, you can’t just…”

“Are we?” There’s a hard edge to Harry’s voice when he cuts Jack off. “Are we? Because there’s a paternity test in your bathroom that says you’re not sure.”

“What?” Jack tries to catch up to Harry’s logic.

“You were out of toothpaste, so I was looking in the bathroom drawer…” 

_ Oh shit _ . The paternity test. “Barry bought that,” Jack says. “I didn’t...”

“It’s in your bathroom.” Harry cuts him off again. “What were you going to do, test our baby like some kind of science project?” Harry’s working up to tears now, Jack knows the signs. “He’s going to be so tiny, and you’re going to pry open his little mouth and take some DNA swab?”

“No,” Jack says, horrified. “I wasn’t going to…”

“Then why do you have a paternity test?”

Harry’s tears spill over and Jack starts to feel frantic. “I told you, Barry bought it.”

“Doesn’t matter who bought it, you kept it.” Harry rubs at his eyes with the heels of his hands. “You introduced me to everyone from your work.” His voice gets higher and shakier. “You fucked me. And you think I’m some slut who’s having somebody else’s baby?”

“No!” Jack practically howls. His hands are shaky with adrenaline he doesn’t know how to use. He doesn’t know how to fix this. Harry’s not making any sense. And it’s completely embarrassing that Niall and Zayn are hearing everything.

“Or was it not for us?” Jack can barely understand Harry, he’s blubbering so hard. “Is there somebody else out there you think you might have knocked up? Some other baby you’re going to test?”

Jack’s had enough. “You’re acting crazy.” His frantic need to fix this vanishes like it’s been sucked down a drain. It’s replaced by something harder. He’s never going to figure out what Harry wants. “I’ve been trying to do the right thing here -- ”

“You let me think we were in this together.” The tide’s ebbing. Harry’s still teary, but he’s closer to a whimper than a sob. “And all this time you were just waiting to see if you could leave.” He sniffs and wipes his nose on the sleeve of his hoodie. “What if it turned up negative, were you just never going to see us again?”

“How can you say that?” Harry’s “us” lands like a blow. Jack’s never thought of Harry and the baby as an us that didn’t include him. ”I have  _ been here _ this whole time, and you care more about Barry’s stupid fucking paternity test…”

Jack only realizes how loud he’s gotten when Niall cuts him off. “I think you should go.”

“Stay the fuck out of this.” Jack spits the words at him, with every bit of venom he’s been trying not to direct at Harry.

“He’s right,” Harry says to Jack. “Just go.”

Zayn speaks up from behind him. “I think we’re done here.” Jack feels a hand on his shoulder, gently suggesting the direction of the door. Whatever’s going on here, Jack’s got sense enough not to compound the problem by punching Harry’s roommate.

He looks back at Harry from the threshold. He’s slumped over on the couch, his head on Niall’s shoulder. “You can’t just…”  _ walk out _ , Jack thinks,  _ push me out _ ,  _ give up _ ,  _ whatever you’re doing _ . “We’re having a  _ baby _ .”

“No, apparently I’m having a baby,” Harry says, as Zayn closes the door behind Jack. “Who knows what you’re doing.”


	8. Chapter 8

As soon as Jack stashes his bag under his desk on Monday, Lou and Emi materialize. Lou leans against one of his cubicle walls. “It was so great to meet Harry this weekend!”

“You guys are so cute,” Emi adds. “How come we didn’t know you had a boyfriend?”

“He’s like the cutest pregnant person,” Lou says. “I wish my ass looked like that when I had Lux.”

“Thank you, I think?” Jack wants to lower his head onto his desk and pretend this isn’t happening. He turns in his chair to face them instead. “Can we please not talk about Harry’s ass?”

“Sorry,” Lou says, unapologetically. “So, we were thinking we could have a shower for you guys. Just, like, a little office thing.”

Jack regrets changing the subject. He regrets bringing Harry to the holiday party. He regrets not shoving the paternity test up Barry’s ass. He regrets everything. 

“We don’t have much time because  _ somebody _ ” -- Lou emphasizes the word accusingly -- “didn’t bother to tell us he was having a baby. But early in January, maybe?”

“That’s… probably not going to be a great time for Harry,” Jack says weakly, reaching for the vaguest excuse he can think of. Anything’s better than starting his Monday morning by telling Lou and Emi that he got dumped. 

“Oh, is he going on bed rest?” Emi looks sympathetic. “That sucks.”

“Yeah.” Jack seizes onto the lifeline. Part of him feels guilty about the lie; most of him is angry at Harry for inserting himself into Jack’s work life just long enough to make their relationship his coworkers’ business.

“Well, maybe we can do something after the baby’s here,” Lou says. “It’d be great to see Harry again. And meet the baby!”

Jack forces a smile. “That’s really nice of you guys, thanks.” He’s got until February to figure out how to dodge this. Maybe by then it’ll hurt less. He stands up and grabs the closest file on his desk. “I’ve, uh, got to run upstairs for a sec.”

“Keep us posted, okay?” Emi calls after him as Jack escapes past them down the hall.

He skirts the egg chairs in the common area and stops outside the elevators, staring at the file in his hand as if it’s got a cue for him about where to go. Of course it doesn’t. He punches the elevator button, trying to figure out how to kill a few minutes before he can plausibly go back to his desk.

The entrance to the marketing department is lined with Christmas lights. Jack walks past the reception counter, crowded with corporate holiday cards from vendors and affiliates, and heads for Tom’s office halfway down the hall. It’s a step up from Jack’s cubicle: a door, but no window. He leans against the doorway until Tom’s blonde head looks up from his laptop.

“Hey,” Tom says, with surprise. “Got a meeting up here?”

“Um.” Jack looks away and waves his pointless file folder vaguely. His throat’s tight. This was a bad idea.

Tom’s next to him before Jack can walk away with his dignity intact, one hand on his shoulder moving him into the office and the other closing the door behind him. “What’s wrong?”

Jack slumps against the door behind him and exhales slowly, until he can say it. “Harry broke up with me.” Part of him was holding out hope for a fruit text this morning. When it didn’t come, he googled  _ baby fruit 33 weeks _ instead. Pineapple.

Tom looks like he’s about to hug him. Jack crosses his arms, file folder and all, and Tom leans back against his desk instead. “I… didn’t know you were together?”

“Well, we were.” Jack breathes in and out again. “ And now we’re not.” It sounds clean that way. Simple. He straightens up. “Okay, I’ve gotta get back downstairs.”

“Wait,” Tom says, as Jack opens the door. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Jack shifts his file folder from one hand to the other. “It’s…” It’s not okay. He’s not okay. “Whatever.”

Tom looks confused. “Drinks later?”

“Yeah, sure.” It beats going home, where the empty crib stares at him reproachfully from the corner of his bedroom. 

“Hey, wait,” Tom calls after Jack. “Ping pong?”

Jack turns. That’s exactly what he needs. “Can Aneurin play?” There are ping pong tables in the atrium, but they’re more obligatory than functional. A talisman of the young and irreverent startup their company once was, two decades before a massive corporate footprint and more stock splits than Jack can count. Nobody plays ping pong in the middle of the work day anymore, and that’s why they need Aneurin. The innovation unit can get away with anything; anybody who sees Aneurin in the game just assumes he’s recruited the rest of them to participate in some cross-departmental kinesthetic brainstorming session.

Tom’s got his phone in hand. “Texting him now. And Barry.” He passes Jack, shoulder-checking him on his way by. “Let’s head down.”

Barry’s already waiting, sprawled out on a beanbag, when they get downstairs. “What’s the occasion?”

“Jack got dumped,” Tom announces, thankfully saving Jack from having to say it himself. He pulls four paddles and a ball out of the cabinet drawer in the kitchen nook. Jack watches Barry struggle to his feet from the beanbag, and doesn’t offer him a hand.

Barry catches the paddle that Tom tosses his way. “So Harry didn’t want to play house anymore?”

“Fuck off,” Jack says, quiet enough that nobody passing by will hear it, but no less intense for that. “This is your fault.”

“How is it my fault?”

“Okay, game on,” Tom interjects as the stairwell door thunks open and Aneurin emerges, GIbson on a lead in front of him. 

“Team Wolf.” Barry smacks Aneurin on the ass with his paddle. “You brought our mascot.”

“Yeah, I’m here late tonight.” Their dog-friendly workplace policies are the stuff of corporate legend. As far as Jack knows, nobody even batted an eye when Aneurin started showing up to work with a German Shepherd puppy two years ago, and Gibson continues to be broadly tolerated even at 80 very dubiously trained pounds.

Jack crouches down in front of Gibson and buries his hands in the fur on either side of his neck. “Hey, fella.” Gibson grins dopily at him as Jack scratches his ears. Maybe he should get a dog. Not a giant one like Gibson, something more apartment-sized, a terrier or whatever. Something to come home to.

“So Jack got dumped and it’s all my fault.” Barry bounces the ping pong ball between his paddle and the table, seemingly unconcerned about his role in the disintegration of Jack’s putative family.

“Yikes,” Aneurin says. “Sorry.” Jack looks up and Gibson takes advantage of the pause in ear-scratching to enthusiastically lick Jack’s face. “Sit, boy,” Aneurin directs him, pulling a treat out of the pocket of his hoodie and dangling it above Gibson’s nose. “Down.” Once Gibson’s on the floor, Aneurin tosses him a chew toy and lines up with Barry across the table from Jack and Tom. “So what happened?”

Jack accepts a ball and paddle from Tom. “Found your fucking paternity test and lost his goddamned mind.” He directs his answer to Barry, along with his serve. The ball smashes onto Barry’s side of the table with a satisfying crack. Barry swings too late and the ball glances off the side of his paddle and lands halfway across the room. 

“That’s stupid,” Barry says over his shoulder as he goes after it. “Fuck him.”

“Thanks, Barry.” Jack catches the ball and serves again before Barry can make it back to the table. “Good talk.”

Barry leaps for the ball and just catches it. “But why would he care?” They fall into a rhythm, the ball ticking back and forth over the net. Jack thinks about the question for a minute, and tries to come up with an answer that makes sense over a ping pong table. _ Because he wanted me to fuck him bare, and I did, and it felt like everything was starting. _

Serve switches to Barry. “Hey,” Barry says, with sudden inspiration, bouncing the ball shallowly on the table. “Maybe it’s not yours, and he’s pissed you were going to figure it out.” He serves to Jack.

Jack swings and misses. The ball bounces off his side of the table and hits the polished concrete floor, bouncing away with a series of hollow thocks. He pokes at the edges of Barry’s theory as he goes to retrieve it, at the possibility that he’s not going to be a father after all. It doesn’t bring him any relief. Just a clenching fear at the idea of losing this last link to Harry. “I don’t know.” He walks back to the table and bounces the ball over to Aneurin for his serve. “I think it was just shitty timing.”

“Timing like how?” Next to Jack, Tom returns Aneurin’s serve with a flick of his wrist.

“He came to the holiday party with me, and then next morning… ” Jack makes an explosion noise. It’s no more than what he was expecting. It just seems particularly cruel that for one night he got to believe it was going to happen.

“I still don’t get it,” Barry says. “If it’s yours, why does it matter?”

Jack thinks about it for the next couple of volleys, letting his mind wander while his body responds automatically, sharply, to the ball. “I don’t know,” he finally says. He’s been trying for months now to figure out what Harry wants and in the end he’s failed. Maybe that’s all there is to it.  _ Or maybe what Harry wants is irrational and that’s why you keep missing it _ , a small voice in the back of his head says.

“So what does this mean with the baby?” Aneurin asks.

“As it turns out,” Jack says, smashing the ping pong ball with vehemence, “that is not a thing that requires my involvement.”

Aneurin nails the return. The rhythm speeds up, the ball tick-tocking between their paddles and the table. A walking meeting passes through the center of the atrium. “It’s a B2B opportunity,” Aneurin says, loudly, their go-to phrase for making any pinball game look like it’s in the service of innovation.

“What’s our entitlement in that market?” Tom asks.

“Six Sigma,” Barry contributes.

“That makes no sense,” says Tom as the walking meeting passes out of earshot. As the Six Sigma black belt among them, he should know.

Aneurin serves. “Are you going to, like, get a lawyer or something?”

“What’s it matter? I’ll pay my child support.” Lawyers are for going to court, fighting about something. If he doesn’t have Harry, nothing else is worth fighting about.

“There’s a crib in your bedroom, and now you’re checking out?” Barry sends the ball back to Jack. 

“There’s nothing I can do.” He spits out the words as he attacks the ball at a bad angle. It hits the net, bounces, and rolls slowly back toward Tom.

Tom captures the ball under his paddle and turns toward Jack. “You just seemed… kind of into it,” he says thoughtfully.

Jack taps his paddle against the edge of the table. Tom’s right, he was into the idea of having a baby with Harry. Is into it. Was. Whatever.

“Serve it up, Tom,” Barry demands. And then, to Jack, “Does the baby even matter, or is this just about Harry?”

Barry’s bluntness hits uncomfortably close to the mark. Every fruit photo he’s taken, every doctor’s appointment he’s been to, every time he’s pressed his hand to Harry’s belly trying to feel a kick… has any of it ever really been about the baby? Or has the baby just been an excuse to be close to Harry? “What’s it matter?” Jack asks. “They’re kind of a package deal.”

Barry lets it go, circling back to his main point. “Anyway, if it’s actually yours, he shouldn’t be a dick about a paternity test.” Tom puts the ball back in play and conversation stills during the volley. “Hey,” Barry says at the next change in serve, “you should come to trivia this week and ask Niall about it.”

Jack drops his paddle. “Niall’s the last fucking person I want to talk to.” The ball goes careening off the table. Gibson abandons his chew toy to chase it, and Aneurin follows him.

“Why not?”

Jack doesn’t want to open the whole can of worms that is last night’s scene at Harry’s apartment. “Because he’s still hung up on Harry.”

Barry has a strange expression. “I doubt that’s an issue.”

_ It sure looked like an issue last night _ , Jack doesn’t say.

Aneurin returns with the ball, Gibson at his heels. “I’ve got to take him outside. Sorry, guys.” 

“It’s okay,” Jack says. “This was enough.” Enough to keep him away from the edge of disintegration for the rest of the day, at least. “Thanks.”

Tom collects the paddles and Jack walks toward the elevator with Barry. “Hey,” Barry says, “are you going home this weekend?”

Jack’s slightly improved mood takes a nosedive back to absolute bottom. Fuck, it’s Christmas. He somehow forgot that it’s already Christmas. Saving his vacation time for the baby suddenly seems like the stupidest, most naive thing he’s ever done. “I’m not gonna pay for a plane ticket this late.”

“Come to Fionn’s, then,” Barry says, holding the elevator door open for Tom. “I can get you the invite.” 

“Why Fionn’s?”

“I go there every year.”

Jack hadn’t known that. And anything’s better than spending Christmas alone in his apartment, the crib lurking in his bedroom like some inverted Nativity story, waiting for a baby that doesn’t want a room at the inn. “Okay, if it’s not a problem.”

“Not a problem at all. You’re going to love it.”

***

The freeway’s quiet on Christmas morning. Jack feels like the only person out in the world, the only one who’s not around a Christmas tree with his family. He drives out of the city under flat grey skies that promise snow by the end of the day. The route takes him deep into the suburbs, past silent blocks of chain stores and well-maintained schools. He winds past a series of cul de sacs and finally finds the right address for Fionn’s parents’, halfway down a block of houses that all look bafflingly the same.

When Jack rings the doorbell, poinsettia tucked in his arm and a bottle of wine in his hand, Barry’s the one to answer. He’s wearing red plaid pajamas and a smug look on his face. Jack cracks up. “You’re kidding me.”

“Oh, wait ‘til you see.” Barry leads him around the corner into a living room dominated by a fat Christmas tree crowded with ornaments. “Everybody, this is Jack.” 

Everyone waves, and Barry points each of Fionn’s siblings out in turn. Maisie’s at the table with Fionn, working on a jigsaw puzzle. Hattie’s on the couch fiddling with a phone on an auxiliary cord. The background music suddenly shifts from Carol of the Bells to Last Christmas, and she leave the phone on the end table and rejoins the jigsaw puzzle. Sonny’s on the floor in front of the gas fireplace, tossing crumpled bits of wrapping paper at a calico cat. Every single one of them is wearing the same flannel pajamas, although Fionn’s ditched the pajama top to pair the plaid pants with a high school robotics team t-shirt.

Harry would love this, Jack thinks, and then realizes that maybe this is what Christmas at Anne and Robin’s house looks like. Maybe Harry and Gemma have matching pajamas. Maybe next year his kid will have them too.

“Who’s here?” Fionn’s mom comes in from the kitchen, wearing an apron with holly leaves on the front of it. “Barry, is this your new fella?”

“No, that’s Niall,” Barry says breezily. “He might come by later. This is Jack.”

Jack might kill him. He hands Fionn’s mom the poinsettia and the wine. “Thank you for having me.”

“This is lovely, Jack, thank you.” She turns to find a spot for the plant on a side table between a nativity scene and a ceramic Christmas tree covered in tiny lightbulbs. “We’re so glad you could be here.” While her back is turned, Jack shoots Barry a murderous look. “It’s always nice to meet Fionn and Barry’s friends.”

“Come here often?” Jack asks Barry, surprised.

“This is my third Whitehead holiday.” Barry points at the fireplace proudly. “Year two you get a stocking.” Jack reads the names embroidered on the five stockings hanging from the mantel. Barry’s is at the end, after Sonny. “Year three you get your own pajamas.”

Barry’s never talked much about his family. Jack had assumed he was spending Christmas here the same way Jack was, just a holiday orphan for the year. He didn’t realize Barry’s been adopted for the long term.

“Brunch in fifteen, gang,” Fionn’s mom announces to the room before turning back toward the kitchen. Jack closes the distance to Barry as soon as she’s out of earshot.

“Is Niall seriously going to be here today?”

“Yes,” Barry hisses. “Get over it.”

Jack scrubs his knuckles over his beard. “Is this a thing now?”

Barry rolls his eyes. “Hasn’t it been obvious?”

“No, it hasn’t been fucking obvious,” Jack spits through gritted teeth. “Last time I saw Niall, Harry was literally in his lap, so no, it hasn’t been very fucking obvious that he’s with you.”

Barry’s eyes narrow “...the fuck?”

“The night Harry broke up with me. Niall was there. He was a dick about it.”

Barry pulls back, a confused look on his face. “He wouldn’t be a dick about it, he’s on your side.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Niall can’t be on Jack’s side when Harry’s head’s in his lap.

“Niall’s a practical guy,” Barry says, and Jack can’t stand the familiarity in his tone. “Paternity test made sense to him.”

“He probably just said that to get in your pants,” Jack hisses, trying to keep his voice low enough that Maisie and Hattie won’t hear him.

“No need for that.” Barry smirks and punches Jack in the arm. “Anyway, you can ask him today. And behave yourself, it’s Christmas.” He bounces off toward the puzzle, plaid cuffs puddling around his slippers. After a beat, Jack follows him, and fiddles uselessly with an assortment of edge pieces until Fionn’s mom calls them to the table.

There’s a red tablecloth and an Advent wreath on the table, and some kind of egg casserole, and some kind of potato casserole, and cinnamon rolls, and fruit, and Fionn’s mom serves them cranberry juice in wine glasses like they’re all twelve years old. Afterwards Jack plays Clue with Fionn and Barry and Sonny until it stops being fun because Fionn efficiently wins every round, and then Hattie gets out her guitar and Fionn’s dad sits down at the piano and they all honest to god sing Christmas carols for a little while, and it would be a perfectly pleasant holiday if every bit of it didn’t make Jack think about Harry.

As the afternoon unwinds and everyone circulates in and out of the tight orbit of the kitchen, dining room, and living room, Fionn’s siblings return one by one in sweaters or t-shirts instead of pajamas. Barry’s the last person to leave the red plaid behind, but by midafternoon he’s finally traded the holiday pajamas for jeans and a football hoodie. Just as he hands Jack a Santa Claus mug of eggnog with a generous shot of rum in it, the doorbell goes. Barry’s head quirks in the direction of the entryway like he’s a cocker spaniel. Jack escapes to the kitchen before he can confirm it’s Niall at the door.

On one side of the kitchen island, Fionn’s mom is neatly packaging leftover casserole in individual tupperware portions. At the sink, Fionn’s cleaning up the last of the brunch dishes. 

Jack leans against the counter next to the open dishwasher. “Can I help?”

“Yeah, sure.” Fionn towels off his hands. “You mind drying?” He pulls another dishtowel out of a drawer and tosses it to Jack.

Jack grabs a Christmas tree plate from the dish drainer, wipes it down, and finds a clean spot on the island to set it. “Thanks for the invite today.”

“No problem.” Fionn empties the cream pitcher down the drain and dunks it in the dishpan. “Thanks for being cool with all of this. I know it’s a lot.”

“I’m just glad I didn’t have to wear pajamas.”

Fionn smiles slightly. “I couldn’t wait to escape the annual pajama torture, and then Barry showed up and started begging for a pair.”

“He wears them well.”

Fionn’s mom tucks the leftovers into the fridge and joins the crowd laughing in the living room They fall into a rhythm of washing and drying, moving from plates to mugs to serving spoons. It’s always easy to be silent with Fionn. After the dishpan’s empty, Fionn wipes down the counters as Jack’s drying the last of the dishes. He wrings the sponge out in the sink and motions for Jack to hang his dishtowel over the oven handle. “Aneurin’s proposing to Lucy today, did you know that?”

“Really?” Jack almost drops the towel. He can’t believe he’s been so wrapped up in Harry and the baby that he’s missed this. “Should I have known?”

“No, I think he’s been pretty low-key about it.” It figures Aneurin would tell Fionn. If anybody can keep a secret, it’s Fionn. Jack’s only mildly irritated about being out of the loop. 

He turns back toward the oven and works the dishtowel through the handle. “Well, good for him.”

“It’s kind of nice that you’ve got the whole kid thing going on,” Fionn says. “So Aneurin’s not the only one, like, settling down.”

“I’m not settling down,” Jack says. The phrase feels strange in his mouth. “And anyway Aneurin’s older.” Just by a couple of years -- he was already in a master’s program the summer they all met, not that it’s ever stopped him from behaving as ridiculously as Barry -- but for this it seems like it makes a difference. “Harry’s 23, it’s not like he going to settle down anytime soon.”

“When’s he turn 24?”

Jack hates that he knows the answer. “February, like right around when the baby’s due.”

“I’m 24,” Fionn says. “Doesn’t mean i don’t know what i want.”

“You’re 24?” Jack’s jaw drops. “How…”

Fionn shrugs and leans back against the counter. “I skipped a couple of grades. Graduated college when I was 19.”

“But you’ve been drinking with us since…” Jack does the math. Their intern summer was… six years ago now? He studies Fionn, looking for signs of youth. “How?”

“I chipped in for pitchers and skipped the nights you guys went to places that card at the door.”

“Wow.” Jack thinks back over all the times Fionn bailed on a night out, realizing that a lot of them must have been because he was underage. Not for the last three years, though; Jack suspects that Fionn may actually have been disappointed to turn 21 and lose his best excuse to be antisocial. “You clever bastard. So when did you turn 21?”

“You’ll never know,” Fionn says solemnly.

“Barry,” Jack yells into the other room. “What’s Fionn’s birthday?”

“Why don’t you ask him?” Barry yells back.

Jack rounds the corner, Fionn at his heels. Barry’s sprawled on the couch with his feet in Niall’s lap. Sonny pauses Die Hard when Jack and Fionn thunder into the room, freezing John McClain as he grimaces at the directory in the lobby of Nakatomi Plaza. Jack points at Barry accusingly. “You don’t know, do you?”

“Sure I do,” Barry says. “It’s… actually, fuck, when’s your birthday, Fionn?”

“Nobody tell him,” Fionn demands, pointing around the room at each of his siblings. Then he yells up the stairs. “Mom, Dad, don’t tell them what my birthday is.”

Niall’s got a hand curled around one of Barry’s ankles. Jack tries to ignore it. “Did you know he’s 24?” he asks Barry.

“No way.” Barry looks up at Fionn. “You’re 24?”

“Yup,” Fionn says, somewhat smugly.

“Shit.” Barry sits up, his heels sliding off Niall’s lap. “Have I been corrupting you?”

“Not very effectively,” Fionn says.

Niall cackles.

“That’s not true,” Barry insists with indignation. “I’m an excellent corrupter. Look at you, living a life of crime.”

As they start to debate the many crimes Fionn may or may not have committed under Barry’s tutelage, Jack glances out the window and realizes that the winter sky’s already starting to darken. He checks his watch, but he doesn’t need to know the time to know he should have called his parents a while ago. He pulls out his phone and slips out the kitchen door onto the back deck, not bothering to detour to the front hallway for his shoes. 

He hovers his thumb over his mom’s contact, willing himself to make the call. It’s been more than two weeks since they’ve talked. He’s not sure which he’s dreading more, his mom’s cheerful inquiries about the baby or her unspoken I-told-you-so’s about Harry. Finally, he taps over to send a text message instead.  _ Merry Christmas! Miss you guys. _

Typing bubbles appear immediately. _ Merry Christmas to you too, sweetheart! Wish you could be here. Tell Barry’s mom thanks from me. _

Then, _ Did your presents come? _

_ Yes thanks!!!! _ Jack chooses exclamation points over specificity. The box had arrived in the middle of the week. A sweater, some wool socks. A tin of his mom’s shortbread, slightly crumbled in transit. And a copy of Pat the Bunny, and a pair of baby moccasins in Campbell tartan. Jack hadn’t even known stuff like that existed.

_ Cookies arrive intact? _

_ Yes, tastes like home _

_ What did you think of the booties? _

He’d tossed them into the crib, navy blotches against the pale sheet. It’s almost worse than when the crib was empty.  _ Cute _ , he types.

_ How’s baby? _ He hasn’t told his mom anything about the last week. Hasn’t wanted her to know that she was right, that Jack was an idiot, that Harry could walk away after all, easy as all that.

Jack googles it quickly.  _ Cantaloupe this week _ .

_ Getting bigger! _

He can’t handle any more of this.  _ I’m being rude, gotta get back inside. Hope you guys had a great day. Love you.  _ He locks his phone before his mom’s typing bubbles metastasize, and slaps it face-down on the deck railing. The fence around the backyard makes an awkward five-sided shape, fitting into a suburban mosaic of other properties. There’s a single scrawny leafless tree in the yard. Jack empathizes, as if he’s a tree that’s been left bare for winter. Or one that’s been pruned. Like he grew extra limbs without realizing it and now they’ve been lopped off. He shifts from foot to foot, feeling the cold through his polka-dotted socks.

The sliding door opens behind him. Jack doesn’t turn around. Expecting Barry or Fionn, he lets the footsteps come all the way across the deck before he looks left to see who’s arrived at the railing next to him.

It’s Niall, leaning on the railing with his hands wrapped around a mug of eggnog. Jack quickly looks back out at the yard. Nobody else is out here. He doesn’t have to be holiday polite.

“Merry Christmas,” Niall says. He takes a long drink of eggnog.

Jack makes a noise that’s somewhere between an affirmation and a grunt, the least he can possibly say without tipping into overt rudeness.

Niall lets Jack be silent for a while. Jack leans on the railing and looks at the ground. Niall’s shoeless too, in rainbow striped socks. Jack’s curiosity finally gets the better of him. “So,” he says. “You and Barry?”

“Yeah,” Niall says, assurance and fondness and ease all packed into in the single syllable.

Jack is horribly jealous that it can be so simple, that you can just go golfing and meet someone, and then you’re spending Christmas together, with no uncertainty or betrayal or ultrasounds. It shows in his voice, probably, when he says, “Didn’t look like that the other night.”

Niall sets his mug on the railing. “Harry’s like this annoying cat, you ought to know that by now.” 

Jack bristles at the familiarity. “Hey,” he starts, intending to defend Harry against the accusation of being an annoying cat, but that’s hard to do when the analogy is so accurate. 

“He was sad and he wanted somebody to scratch his ears or whatever,” Niall says. “Don’t make it something it’s not.”

Jack’s fingernails bite into the cold wood of the deck railing. It’s easier to be mad at Niall than Harry. He debates how long he should stand here before he can announce that he’s cold and go inside. Just before he opens his mouth, Niall speaks up again. “You probably don’t want to hear it from me, but he misses you.”

“You’re right,” Jack says. “I don’t want to hear it from you.” He doesn’t want to hear it from anybody but Harry, but Niall makes a particularly lousy messenger.

“Well, somebody had to say it.”

If Harry’s not the one to say it, Jack can’t see how it makes any difference. “So what?”

Niall sighs. “One of you needs to be the reasonable person here, and it’s not going to be Harry.” 

“Hey,” Jack says, indignantly, and then wonders why his first instinct is always to defend Harry. He remembers what Barry said earlier, about Niall being on Jack’s side. “Why me?”

“Because it was you last time.”

Jack looks at Niall, confused. “Last time?”

“So remember when Harry told you he was pregnant, and you kicked him out…”

Jack’s indignation spikes. “I never kicked him out!”

Niall holds up a palm. “Yeah, yeah, we figured. Anyway, you know Harry, he thinks everything’s gotta be a rom-com. He came home and cried on Zayn’s shoulderbecause you didn’t, like, immediately sweep him off his feet and live happily ever after.”

“That was an option?” Not that he would have, Jack realizes. He thinks back to that night, to pounding the path around the lake as dawn broke, stomach twisted into knots of dread and shame. It’s hard to remember there was a time he didn’t want this.

“Well, anyway, you tracked him down. Zayn was with him when he texted you. Told him he was an idiot for trying to get you to come to the ultrasound first thing, like he was making it some kind of challenge.”

Jack feels vindicated. He’s not the only one with the sense that Harry’s been testing him.

“But you actually did it, and all the other stuff too.” Niall clinks his mug against the railing. “You were like the rom com boyfriend.”

Jack sees where Niall’s going. “And nobody takes a paternity test in a rom com.”

“Exactly.” Niall points at him. “Now can you please have your, like, flash cards on the doorstep moment? Kiss in the rain or whatever? Because he’s driving us crazy.”

Like it’s that fucking easy. “That’s not going to fix this.” Jack doesn’t know what will, but he’s pretty sure that the remedy for failing Harry’s rom com test is not him holding a boombox in his hands under Harry’s window.

“You’re going to have a kid together,” Niall says. “Don’t you kind of have to try?”

Jack’s done his share of trying, and apparently Niall knows that. “I’m not going to go through life failing to live up to Harry’s standards.” He’s carried Christmas trees and held Harry’s hand and watched every rom-com in the entire history of film, and all it got him in the end was Harry and Zayn  _ and Niall _ kicking him out of the apartment. And now Niall’s got the nerve to ask him to come back for more. 

“I think Harry gets that.” Niall shifts from foot to foot against the cold deck.

Jack can’t feel his toes. He picks up his phone and turns to go back into the house, leaving Niall at the railing with his eggnog. “Yeah, well, he can let me know.”

***

At midnight on New Year’s Eve, Jack’s thinking less about the start of 2018 and more about the start of week 35. He googles it. Honeydew. Next month the fruit scale will top out. He wonders if there’s a week-by-week guide he can google after that, something that will tell him what Harry and the baby might be up to. Since Harry probably never will.

He’s on the couch with his laptop later that week, half watching a basketball game and half dispatching work emails, when Barry calls. That’s unusual enough on its own. Barry doesn’t usually call, which Jack suspects is because he can’t send wolf emojis over the phone. Jack picks up.

The dull roar of voices and music in the background almost drowns out Barry’s voice. “Hey, I’m at the pub.”

“Yeah, I got that.” Jack shifts his laptop onto the coffee table and starts to pace a circle around the kitchen island. “What’s up?”

“Niall just went to take Harry to the hospital.” Barry enunciates Harry’s name so it lands heaviest on Jack’s ear. “Thought you’d want to know.”

“What?” It’s too early. The baby’s not due for another month. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, he just got a call and left.”

“Did he say why?” Jack paces into the bedroom and does a u-turn in front of the crib. He runs his fingers along the slats as he passes by,

“Nope,”

“Well, am I supposed to go?” Maybe the baby’s coming early. Maybe something’s wrong with Harry. “Why are you telling me?”

“I don’t know, man.” Barry shouts at someone in the background and then returns to the conversation. “Niall wouldn’t have told me if he didn’t want you to know.”

That makes sense, but Jack’s suspicious anyway. Sure, Niall wants him to know, but Niall probably has his own motives. It doesn’t stop Jack from clicking the phone into speaker mode while he tugs on his shoes. The clamor of the pub fills the apartment, “I’m gonna go,” he tells Barry. “Tell me if I shouldn’t.”

“Nah, go get ‘em, tiger.”

Jack skips the elevator and pushes open the door to the stairwell instead, Running down five flights of stairs to the garage probably doesn’t save him any time, but at least he’s moving.

It’s a miserable night. A cold, thick rain on the edge of becoming sleet assaults Jack’s windshield. Jack swears under his breath at the overcautious drivers choking the streets. He drums his thumbs against the steering wheel, hoping that Harry was able to get to the hospital in time. If there was anything time-sensitive.

The hospital parking garage is emptier at night. Jack finds a spot with no trouble, and follows the signs inside the building to the birth center. Three women in scrubs sit at the nursing station that marks the entry to the wing. One of them looks up as Jack approaches cautiously. “Can I help you?”

“I’m here to see Harry Styles.” Jack hopes he looks credible. Like someone who’s maybe possibly about to become a father. He’s glad he grabbed his wool coat instead of his puffer jacket.

The nurse types something into a computer. She scrolls down the screen. “Is he expecting you?”

“Oh,” Jack says. “Um, probably not.”

The nurse rolls her chair to the other side of the nursing stand to consult with one her colleagues. Their conversation is too low for Jack to hear. The second nurse glances up at him while the other is talking, and then the first nurse wheels her way back to where Jack’s waiting at the counter. “I’m sorry,” she tells Jack. “We can’t take you back there without the patient’s consent.”

“Oh.” Jack thinks for a moment as the nurse starts to roll away. “What about the baby?”

She turns back toward him. “What about the baby?”

“He’s a patient too, isn’t he? If he’s mine, my kid, does that make a difference?” It’s not fair that Niall’s back there, maybe getting to meet Jack’s son before he does. Jack curls his fingers under the edge of the nursing station countertop.

“Babies don’t get to authorize their own visitors.” The nurse smiles sympathetically at him. “Would you like us to let Mr. Styles know that you’re here?”

Mr. Styles. Jack tries to picture Harry in a hospital bed, in the middle of some medical procedure, and a nurse announcing, “Mr. Styles, a Jack Lowden is here to see you.” He can’t picture what Harry’s reaction would be. He pictures the nurse coming back out to the front desk, telling Jack that Harry doesn’t want to see him. “No, I don’t want to, um, disturb him,” Jack says, “I’ll just…” He points toward the hallway, although he has no idea what his next move is. He only knows that he can’t sit in the waiting area here, with the nurses who probably think he’s some creepy ex-boyfriend who just tried to sneak in to the delivery room.

God, is that what he actually is? The thought chases him all the way down the hall and around the corner to the elevator bank. He leans against a wall next to a plaque with the names of hospital foundation donors, and slides down to sit on the floor. It seems like it can take a while to have a baby, if that’s what’s happening. It doesn’t make any sense for him to wait. He could he here for days. On the other hand, isn’t that his job here? The father waiting uselessly, while Harry does all the hard work?

He resolves to wait a couple of hours, at least. Then he can decide what to do next. Maybe Barry can get an update from Niall or something. He checks his phone battery. 75 percent. At least he can finish up some emails.

An hour later, he’s absorbed in trying to manipulate his phone screen so he can see a meaningful section of a spreadsheet. He doesn’t notice that anyone’s turned the corner until he hears Harry’s unmistakable voice. “Jack?” 

The sneak attack robs Jack of the chance to school his expression into something neutral. When he looks up from his phone and sees Harry and Niall, it’s probably all splashed across his face, hope and hurt and love. He stares at Harry. He’s enormous, much bigger than he was three weeks ago. His coat gapes open and his hoodie is stretched to its limits over his belly. And he looks like he’s about to cry. No surprise there.

“Oh, thank god,” Niall says. “You got this, Jack?” When Jack nods, Niall vanishes into the stairwell next to the elevators. The door thunks shut behind him.

Jack gets to his feet, but doesn’t make a move to approach Harry, who’s still standing on the other end of the row of elevators. “So, no baby?” The expanse of hospital tile between them feels like a force field.

“False alarm.” Harry rakes his hand back through his hair. “Just some bad contractions.”

“Are you okay?” 

“Yeah, fine.” Harry runs a hand over his belly. “I just have to go on bed rest for a couple of weeks.”

That’s that, then. No baby tonight. And Jack’s baby shower lie is conveniently coming true. There’s nothing else for him to do here. “Do you need a ride?”

Harry stares at him across the force field. The elevator dings. A couple emerges, obviously headed to the birth center. The shape of one man’s bald head matches the curve of his belly. His partner links their arms together after they weave around Harry. In the silence after they’ve gone, someone in scrubs passes the turnoff to the elevator bank, the squeak of their sneakers crescendoing and fading. “You’re here,” Harry says, like he can’t quite believe it.

Jack tugs on his ear nervously. “I didn’t know if the baby was coming…”

Harry’s not looking for an explanation, apparently. “They hook you up to this thing -- “ he touches his belly, demonstrating something that Jack doesn’t understand -- “where you can see contractions, and the heartbeat. Like, a chart.”

“That’s cool,” Jack says. He’s missed that weird alien heartbeat. Steadily flickering away in there, no matter what he or Harry does.

“You would have liked it. You’re the only one who’s ever interested in this stuff.” Harry blinks back tears and wipes his face with the flat of his palm. “I wanted you here.”

As soon as Harry takes a step toward him, Jack moves to meet him halfway. It’s impossible to get his arms all the way around Harry, so Jack settles for an awkward kind of side hug, good enough for Harry to cry into Jack’s shoulder. Harry leans heavily against him, and Jack walks them out of the elevator traffic flow. The corner of a donor appreciation plaque digs into his shoulder as he leans against the wall, but everything feels right with Harry in his arms.

“I’m so sorry.” Harry straightens up and looks Jack in the eye. “You really have been doing everything right, and I didn’t appreciate it.”

Jack looks to the side to break the unsettling eye contact. Harry sees too much of him, and it makes him feel like he’s got to set the record straight before Harry figures it out himself. “I don’t think I’ve actually been trying to do the right thing.” He focuses on the fleecy collar of Harry’s coat. “I’ve just been trying to keep you.” After a moment, he looks sideways to see Harry’s reaction.

A slow smile is spreading across his face. “Okay.” He settles back against Jack. Jack tightens his arm around Harry’s shoulder, exposed and relieved. After a moment, Harry asks, “What about the baby?”

“So.” It’s the question Jack’s been thinking about since ping pong. The answer’s been taking shape ever since, all the things he should have said that night at Harry’s apartment. “The other night, when you asked what I’d do if the test was negative?” He’s grateful for Harry’s face against his shoulder; all of this is much easier to say to an empty hospital hallway. “It actually doesn’t make any difference. I’d still want you even if you were already, like, single dad with a three-year-old or whatever.” He feels Harry laugh. “So it’s just kind of… a, a bonus, that this one’s ours. Mine.” Jack curls his arm along the side of Harry’s belly that’s not already pressed against him.

Harry circles his fingers around Jack’s wrist, keeping his hand in place.

“And even if it wasn’t, I’d still want to do this with you.” Jack’s running out of words. He doesn’t know, entirely, what “this” means, but it’s what he wants. Having the baby, raising him, stroller walks and youth soccer. Everything. He takes a deep breath. Harry hasn’t said anything. “I mean, if that’s what you want.”

“Of course it is.” Harry reaches up to kiss him, his hand warm on Jack’s face.

Jack relaxes, feeling Harry’s flushed and tear-damp cheek against his. He wonders if the baby’s picking up on any of this. It seems like he ought to know that they’re happy. Then he remembers. “Hey, one more thing…” He digs for his phone, trying to remember which pocket he’d stuffed it into when Harry appeared.

“What?” Harry looks confused.

“Check this out.” Jack scrolls frantically through his email until he finds the one he’s looking for. He hands his phone to Harry.

Harry thumbs up and down the email, reading aloud. “This email confirms that you have been added to the waitlist…” He trails off, looking up at Jack. “Child care?”

“It’s the one at my work.”

“Your work has day care?” Harry looks back down at the email. “Number 34. Any chance we’ll get a spot?”

“Maybe this spring, definitely by the fall.” Harry’s missing the point. “Look at the date on the email.”

Harry scrolls back to the top. “July 28.” His eyes widen. “You’ve been looking for child care since July?”

“That part just kind of happened,” Jack says. “But I’ve been in this the whole time. Since, you know, plum or kiwi or whatever.”

“You didn’t have to prove it to me,” Harry says, but Jack’s distracted by a ripple of movement under Harry’s sweatshirt, right where it’s stretched the tightest across the middle of his belly.

“Did he just…” Jack hovers his hand over the spot where he’d seen Harry’s shirt rise and contract, like something’s simmering underneath the surface. 

“Yeah, you can see it on the outside now,” Harry says unconcernedly. “You’ve got a lot to catch up on.” He grabs Jack’s hand and pulls him toward the elevator button. “Let’s get out of here.”


	9. Chapter 9

“Sláinte!” Barry crows, returning to the table with a pitcher of green beer raised in one hand. His other hand holds a tower of empty pint glasses threatening to topple.

“You’re a disgrace to the Irish,” Niall tells him, curling his hand around his own pint of Guinness. 

“Can’t celebrate St. Paddy’s day without green beer.” The pint glasses teeter as Barry attempts to deposit them onto the table. Niall grabs the top two off the stack just in time. “And it’s not like the suits are traditional.” He pops a thumb under the lapel of his shamrock-covered suit, identical to the one Niall’s wearing.

“You look ridiculous,” Jack tells the both of them.

“Bold words from a guy who owns a kilt,” Niall says, leaning back in his chair. Barry pours with a flourish and offers the glass to Jack.

“I’m good.” Jack tips his bottle of Stella at Barry, and then at the pint of green beer. “That looks like a terrible idea.”

“I’m full of them,” Barry says cheerfully. He slides the glass down the table to Fionn. Fionn ignores it. He’s deep in conversation with Zayn, which Jack notes with interest. Barry extends another pint glass. “Harry?”

“Absolutely not.” Harry doesn’t even look up from where Rory’s finishing a bottle, tucked in the crook of Harry’s elbow. The early St. Patrick’s Day dinner at the pub is one of the first times the three of them have left the apartment together in the six weeks since Rory arrived. Diapers and formula and spare clothes and blankets and burp cloths are crammed under the car seat stroller to the limits of its capacity, but a disaster for which they are unprepared still seems possible at any moment. They’ve already fumbled their way through a traumatic diaper change on the floor in the men’s room, Jack scrabbling for a diaper and ointment and a clean sleeper while Rory screamed and squirmed on the changing pad and Harry frantically tore wipes from the packet one-handed.

Harry sits the empty bottle on the table, next his untouched pint, and mops a dribble of formula off Rory’s cheek. Rory blinks and yawns.

“Want me to take him so you can eat?” Jack asks.

“Yes, thanks.” Harry hands him the burp cloth and Jack drapes it over his shoulder, even though his shirt probably already has a pale scuff of baby sick down the back, just like every other shirt he owns these days. Harry shifts Rory until he’s got one hand under his head and the other under his bum, and shuffles him into Jack’s arms.  _ don’t drop him don’t drop him don’t drop him _ , Jack tells himself, right up until he’s got the baby settled securely on his shoulder.

Harry slides his chair back and goes to inspect the chafing dishes set up on the plywood-covered pool table. Three middle-aged women with shamrocks bobbing from springs on their headbands smile at him, and Harry gets drawn into a conversation. Their heads swivel toward Jack as Harry points him out, and all three women simultaneously make the face that Jack has come to know as the “it’s a baby!” expression. He turns in his seat so they can get a better look at Rory over his shoulder. Harry grins proudly at him, and he’s got tired eyes and greasy hair and a disgraceful hoodie, but nothing’s ever looked better to Jack.

Zayn leans across the table and wiggles one of the baby’s feet. “There’s my mysterious roommate.”

“He’s kind of a shitty roommate,” Jack says, patting Rory on the back. “Doesn’t pay rent, pisses all over the place.” Jack turns to kiss his head, sweet-smelling despite the beer and cabbage aroma of the pub. He rubs his cheek against Rory’s fluff of hair.

“Oh, I’m not complaining.” Zayn waits for Jack to shift Rory off his shoulder, then runs his fingertip over Rory’s dimpled knuckles until he grabs Zayn’s finger. “Keep them as long as you want.”

Jack had stayed in the hospital the first night, curled up uncomfortably on a foldout chair while Harry defied the nurse’s instructions and kept Rory cuddled in bed with him instead of swaddled in his bassinet. He’d still fussed intermittently all night long, both of them trying bottles, pacifiers, pacing, bouncing, anything, and in the morning Harry looked blearily at Jack and said, “Zayn’s going to kill me.”

“Stay at mine for a bit,” Jack said immediately. “Just until he’s, like, crying less.” So they’d walked out of the hospital the next day -- Jack fully expecting that someone in scrubs was about to run after them to say there’d been a mistake, that the two of them weren’t possibly to be trusted with a baby -- and snapped the car seat into the base in Jack’s back seat, and went to home to Jack’s apartment. Jack still feels like he’s getting away with something, luring Harry and the baby into his lair with the promise of no roommate to disturb.

That, and an in-unit washer and dryer, which turns out to be his apartment’s most baby-friendly feature. Before Anne left last week, she was doing a load of laundry every day. Harry and Jack have been considerably less regular about it. (Harry cried when Anne drove away, Jack’s first clue that Harry crying was not a condition limited to pregnancy.) The couple of loads they’ve managed are still taking up half the couch; instead of folding they’ve been fishing clean sleepers and onesies out of the laundry mountain as needed. 

“Crying less” turned out to be a very vague milestone. Rory sleeps for five or six hours in a row now, but he still wakes them up loudly and persistently at least twice a night. Jack keeps telling Harry there’s no need to make Zayn endure it. That’s easier than admitting that Zayn would never appreciate the 4:00 a.m. feeding the way that Jack does. As soon as Harry scoops Rory out of his crib and quiets him down with a bottle, Jack slides back into dozy half-consciousness, just awake enough to hear Harry singing softly to the baby. Then Harry crawls back into bed with Rory a tidy little swaddled burrito between them, an indulgence only succumbed to at the tail end of the night. Jack slides off the pillow so he can nose up against Rory’s soft and baby-smelling head, and Harry curls protectively around the baby and tucks his knees against Jack’s. In the hazy filter of half-sleep, how much Jack wants this and how much it terrifies him resolve themselves into a desperate kind of happiness. The rest of the day he’s so tired that he feels like he’s hallucinating, but he’s not ready to give up 4:00 a.m., not yet.

Harry returns with a pile of corned beef on his plate, flanked by negligible amounts of cabbage and potatoes. Fionn studies his plate when Harry slides it onto the table. “That’s a lot of corned beef.”

“Have you ever tried it?” Harry spears a chunk of corned beef with his fork and holds it out toward Fionn. “C’mon, Fionnley.”

Fionn gives him a strange look. Harry’s getting to be as good as Barry at pushing Fionn’s boundaries.

“There’s pickles too.” Harry waves the fork in Fionn’s face.

“I’ll pass.” Fionn turns back to Zayn, and Jack nudges Barry to see if he’s noticed. He gets drawn into Barry and Niall’s conversation.

When he looks back at Harry a few minutes later, he’s got one elbow on the table, chin propped in his hand. Jack watches as Harry’s eyes drift close and the fork in his other hand wilts back toward the plate, weighed down with corned beef.

He touches Harry’s arm, and his eyes blink open. “You ready to go?”

“Yes please,” Harry mumbles, slumping down in his chair and resting his head on Jack’s shoulder. “Sorry.”

“Works for me.” Genuinely, embarrassingly, nothing is better than having all three of them home in the predictability of his apartment. “I’ll go cash out.”

Jack carries Rory to the bar with him and digs out his wallet. After a couple of one-handed attempts at holding his wallet open to thumb out a credit card, the bartender notices his predicament. He reshelves the bottle he’s holding and flattens the wallet against the bartop with his palm. “Look at that little ginger,” he says approvingly, as he swipes the card that Jack slides out.

Jack moves the baby onto his shoulder and wraps the curl of red hair at the nape of Rory’s neck around his finger. “He’s a likely fellow,” he says, his all-purpose response to any baby compliments.The baby gets a lot of compliments.

The bartender looks back and forth between Jack’s hair and the baby’s. “No question who he belongs to.”

“No,” Jack says, kissing Rory’s forehead. “No question at all.”

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi on [tumblr](http://ferryboatpeak.tumblr.com/)! rebloggable fic post [here](http://ferryboatpeak.tumblr.com/post/171956885193), occasional extras in the tag [here](http://ferryboatpeak.tumblr.com/tagged/mpreg-jackrry). always happy to entertain asks in this verse.


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